Current value to the private sector
Around £7.2bn
Beneficiary
Marjorie Scardino, chief executive of Pearson, had a base salary of £969,000 in 2010 and took home a bonus of £1.6m.
Private firms are yet to own and run publicly funded schools for profit, but under Labour and this government their role in every aspect of education has become more prominent. They routinely provide supply teachers, ICT, grounds maintenance and, in the case of a handful of schools, day-to-day management.
Breckland free school in Suffolk will be managed by Swedish company IES when it reopens in September. As the groups of parents behind other free schools come to realise that managing schools is harder work than they imagined, a range of companies are lining up to offer help, including Zenna Atkins' Wey Education, who said last December that it saw an opportunity brought about by "the deconstruction of the education function within local authorities".
Education is big business and getting bigger as local authorities lose their role under the government's academy programme, leaving head-teachers seeking help from the private sector. Security software provider Corero revealed last week it had more than tripled its revenues, citing UK schools as a major growth market. The London-listed software group recorded revenues of around £11m – up from £3m in 2010 – in its recent financial results through winning contracts from 192 academies. Pearson, the Financial Times publisher, said that it expected to soon announce a 10% rise in earnings, with £2bn of digital revenues and £600m of revenues in emerging markets.
It has subsidiary companies providing educational services, including the exam board Edexcel, and insiders admits that Pearson sees opportunities to offer further services which it hopes schools will embrace amid the "shifting terrain" from the "austere financial climate and the changes to schools' relationships with local authorities"."
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