The past two days has seen the UK's education reform movement gathered in London. The Education Reform Summit 2014 was co-hosted by the Department for Education and a small think tank called the Education Foundation. Some on Twitter have been curious about this organisation, so here is a short extract from the 'education reform' chapter of our recent book, 'A Quiet Word', which takes a look at the extensive lobbying activities of the 'education reform movement' on both sides of the Atlantic. 

From 'A Quiet Word':

Set up in 2011, The Education Foundation is described by its co-founder Ty Goddard as a think tank and reform organisation. It has, however, a particular focus on technology as a driver of reform. It hosts an ed-tech incubator programme, for example, to bring classroom products to scale. Google and Facebook are both advisers to the project.

The Education Foundation does not publish its financial backers, although it says it is funded by charitable foundations and leading businesses through its research, sponsored events and specific projects. Those named on its website include Google, which sponsored its first birthday bash, McKinsey, for which it hosted an event, and a collaboration with Facebook and the Gates Foundation on an education-centred ‘hackathon’, aimed at building experimental apps for schools.

The group has ties with the reform lobby in the US, from whose experience it is keen to learn. Goddard, for example, was visited in London by American lobbyists to discuss strategies on ‘growing the UK education reform movement’. Among those visiting was a lobbyist from US reform group, the Foundation for Excellence in Education. 

This is an organisation that aggressively promotes online schools. It is financed by, among others, Gates and others in the billionaires’ club, as well as Pearson and Amplify, News Corp education arm. In 2013, Michael Gove, on one of his many trips to the US, delivered the keynote speech at the foundation’s annual conference. Topics discussed included ‘extreme choices through digital learning’ and ‘the art of communicating education reform’. 

The Foundation for Excellence is run by Jeb Bush, brother of George. Bush is a keen advocate of virtual schooling, which has been pioneered in his home state of Florida. His foundation has come in for criticism, primarily for working with US public officials to write education laws that could benefit some of its corporate funders. It has also been accused of providing ‘a dating service for corporations selling educational products – including virtual schools – to school chiefs’. Goddard, though, sees Bush as a ‘pioneer’. The US delegation spent their time visiting UK academies and meeting with senior Department for Education officials. They even had a policy discussion in Number 10.

The Education Foundation also hosted a meeting of twenty-five education reform lobby groups in Washington, part-funded by the British government. Again, the purpose was to learn lessons from their US colleagues on how to secure system reform and introduce more ‘innovation’ to schools. It included some familiar names in the US privatisation / reform lobby: Democrats for Education Reform, StudentsFirst and the Foundation for Excellence in Education. 

To find out more about the lobbying activity of these and other groups in the education reform movement, both in the UK and US, read Chapter 9: 'Reform: Opportunities to Profit' from 'A Quiet Word: Lobbying, Crony Capitalism and Broken Politics in Britain', published by Random House, March 2014.