Steiner free schools debacle shows failure of government drive to promote genuine “diversity” in state system

A few years ago, I watched* a short film about High Tech High, the innovative charter school in San Diego, California which sees students taught to a great extent through projects and which largely eschews exams.

The institution, set up to reject the “factory” model of schooling in favour of something more akin to 21^st century workplaces, was hailed as the “best school in the world” last year by that trendier-than-trendy broadsheet the Daily Telegraph.

But whatever the debates about schools such as this – and sceptics will include traditionalists as well, as perhaps, critics of the academy-like charter schools – one thought stood out.

High Tech High would be impossible in England’s state-funded system. It would be just too radical to survive the twin pressures of our stultifying, top-down, results-driven accountability system and the behind-the-scenes steering of traditionalist ministers.

These thoughts now resurface as I survey the policy car crash that has been the government’s short-lived – and much-contested - willingness to embrace one of education’s more alternative visions through its free schools scheme.