When the money followed for decades
Four countries let public funding follow the child for 16 to 109 years. The debate measured families and test scores. This brief asks what happened to the teaching workforce and the institutions that train it.
NowFour countries have let funding follow the child for 16 to 109 years. This brief asks what happened to their teachers.
Four systems, one lens
Bar length is years of portable funding. Tap a country to read what it did to the supply side.
The Netherlands
The oldest case. After a century of political conflict — the Schoolstrijd — the 1917 "Pacification" amended the constitution so privately governed schools receive the same public funding as state schools, provided they meet statutory requirements on pupil numbers, hours, and quality inspection.6 The result: roughly 70% of Dutch schools are run by private boards, all funded equally.13 Crucially, funding portability here is inseparable from a strong central Inspectorate — freedom to establish is paired with an obligation to be inspected.9
A century of the most pluralistic provider system in the world did not immunize the teaching workforce. The Netherlands entered a significant structural teacher shortage — lerarentekort — flagged by researchers since 2011, driven by workload, pay, an ageing workforce, and teachers' reported lack of professional autonomy.6367 The OECD and EU monitors record the shortage as significant but improving under close monitoring as of 2025.66 Observation: provider pluralism and workforce sufficiency are separate problems; solving portability did not solve supply.
Coded: portability ≠ workforce sufficiency
Sweden
The purest market design in Europe. A 1992 reform let independent "free schools" — including for-profit chains, some stock-market-listed — open with light regulatory requirements, charge no tuition, follow the national curriculum, and be funded per student on equal terms with municipal schools.18 Free schools now enroll roughly 18% of students.18
Sweden is where the incentive structure reached the workforce directly. Because per-student funding rewards enrollment and grades are set locally, researchers and even center-right politicians have debated a documented pattern of grade inflation as a competitive response — an effect that runs through teachers' professional judgment.44 Early cuts fell heaviest on special-education and language teachers.16 By 2025 the government's own inquiry proposed barring new operators from extracting profit for five years and giving municipal schools more per-student funding to reflect their obligation to staff places for every child.4348
Coded: re-regulating the provider side
Chile
The longest-running universal voucher, and the most complete arc from deregulation to re-regulation. Introduced in 1981 under the Pinochet government on a Chicago-school design, it built a system in which around 91% of enrollment sat under a voucher scheme by 2018 and for-profit operation was permitted for almost 30 years.25 The widely cited verdict: unregulated choice produced flat scores and widening rich–poor gaps, and only added regulation began to deliver gains.28
The 2015 Ley de Inclusión is the most instructive institutional event for a portability system anywhere: it banned profit-taking in publicly funded schools (two-thirds of private-voucher schools were for-profit), ended copayments, and replaced school-side selection with a centralized admissions lottery.5354 For the provider and workforce side this meant a large share of institutions had to convert to non-profit status or lose funding — a forced restructuring of who is allowed to operate.56 Segregation remains high; the mechanism that moved it was fee rules, not choice itself.25
Coded: re-regulating the provider side
England
The one case that speaks to WMFC's exact institutional question — where the training of teachers is done. From 2010 the Coalition government deliberately shifted initial teacher training away from universities and toward schools, treating university-led training as "the problem," via the School Direct route and a target of at least 50% school-led places.3335 This is the direct analogue to a portable-funding system relocating credentialing out of the traditional college of education.
The relocation produced a supply problem, not just an ideological one. As places moved from universities (which were simultaneously capped) to schools, School Direct ran well below capacity — about 45% of places filled in an early year, projected to yield thousands fewer trained teachers — and prestigious university providers exited or scaled back.3639 The lesson most transferable to the U.S.: decentralizing credentialing does not automatically create throughput, and can suppress it unless deliberately resourced.37
Coded: credentialing moved, throughput fell
The four systems in one frame
Read down the last column. It is the one the domestic field leaves unowned.
| System | Portability mechanism | Provider market | Direction of travel | Workforce signal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Netherlandssince 1917 | Constitutional equal funding, all schools inspected | ~70% privately governed, non-profit | Stable, inspection-anchored | Structural teacher shortage despite mature pluralism |
| Swedensince 1992 | Universal voucher, for-profit permitted | ~18% free schools, chains listed on exchange | Re-regulating | Competition reached teacher judgment (grade-inflation debate) |
| Chilesince 1981 | Nationwide voucher, later centralized admissions | ~91% under voucher; for-profit banned 2015 | Re-regulating | Forced non-profit conversion restructured who may operate |
| Englandsince 2010 | Academies + school-led teacher training | Academy trusts; school-based training routes | Supply-constrained | Credentialing moved off campus, throughput fell |
Across every mature system, the domestic argument was about families and test scores. The durable action was on the supply side — who is allowed to operate, and who is trained to staff it — and in three of four cases the state came back years later to re-regulate exactly there.
What transfers to the U.S.
Four coded observations, written so either side of the choice debate can cite them.
Portability and workforce sufficiency are separate problems. The Netherlands solved funding portability a century ago and still faces a structural teacher shortage. A U.S. state can get money-follows-the-child right and still have no one trained to staff the schools it enables — the seam WMFC measures.
Mature systems re-regulate the provider side. Sweden (2025 inquiry) and Chile (2015 Inclusion Law) both legislated new constraints on who may operate and how, years after founding. Any U.S. institution building for this sector is building toward a regulated end-state, not today's looser one.
Moving credentialing off the university campus can suppress supply. England's deliberate shift of teacher training to schools cut throughput when university places were capped faster than school routes filled. The U.S. analogue — alternative-certification routes for choice-sector teachers — carries the same throughput risk.
Per-student funding creates incentives that reach the classroom. Sweden's grade-inflation debate shows competition pressures can act through teachers' own professional judgment, not just around it. Where U.S. programs tie provider revenue to enrollment or outcomes, the workforce is inside the incentive, not outside it.
Limits, then sources
- Four cases are not a sample. These systems were selected because they are mature and frequently cited, not drawn at random. They can show that an effect has occurred somewhere; they cannot establish base rates or prove what would happen in a U.S. state.
- Institutions differ more than the frame admits. Dutch pillarized funding, Swedish for-profit chains, Chilean municipal-plus-voucher structure, and English academy trusts are not the same instrument. Cross-country workforce comparisons should be read as directional, not equivalent.
- Attribution is contested at the source. Sweden's grade-inflation and segregation findings, and Chile's segregation trend, are actively debated in the cited literature; some studies find modest positive achievement effects. This brief reports the debate, and does not resolve it.
- Teacher-shortage causation is not isolated to choice. The Dutch and English shortages have demographic, pay, and labor-market drivers that would exist without portable funding. The claim here is narrow: pluralism did not prevent them — not that choice caused them.
- Secondary and translated sources. Several Swedish and Chilean policy details are read through English-language secondary reporting. Primary-source verification in Swedish and Spanish would strengthen every row and has not yet been done.
- Single point in time. Checked July 2026. The Swedish for-profit inquiry and Chilean admissions rules are live policy and may move.
Show all numbered sources
- Government of the Netherlands — Public-authority and private schools / Freedom of education (Article 23). government.nl
- Dutch Inspectorate of Education — The Dutch educational system; freedom of establishment, organization, conviction. onderwijsinspectie.nl
- Patrinos, H. A. / World Bank (2010) — Private Education Provision and Public Finance: The Netherlands. openknowledge.worldbank.org
- ASCD, Educational Leadership — Free Choice and Vouchers Transform Schools. ascd.org
- Cuban, L. (blog, S. Hjelm) — Vouchers and Market-Driven Schools in Sweden. larrycuban.wordpress.com
- Gutiérrez et al., British Educational Research Journal (2021) — Chile's enduring educational segregation. bera-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
- FutureEd, Georgetown — What Chile Teaches Us About School Vouchers. future-ed.org
- Newman, S., Journal of Education for Teaching (2025) — University-led teacher training treated as "the problem." tandfonline.com
- Journal of Education for Teaching (2024) — Role of schools in England's ITE; School Direct; ≥50% school-led target. tandfonline.com
- The Conversation (2025) — Why UK policies failed to recruit enough teachers. theconversation.com
- The Conversation (2021) — Major teaching reform will erode the intellectual basis of the profession. theconversation.com
- BBC News — England's teacher training system 'broken down'. bbc.co.uk
- The Local Sweden (Apr 2025) — Free-school profit-curb inquiry; five-year profit-extraction ban proposed. thelocal.se
- Institute of Economic Affairs — For-profit free schools: the evidence from Sweden. iea.org.uk
- The Local Sweden (Apr 2025) — How far-reaching are the government's free-school reforms. thelocal.se
- Bellei / Review of Education (2023) — Chile's Inclusion Law: for-profit ban, copayment removal. tandfonline.com
- Harvard Kennedy School / CID — Rethinking Education Governance: Chile's reform journey. hks.harvard.edu
- Educators Perspective — Education Policy in Chile. educatorsperspective.com
- Primary-schooling study (2022) — Dutch teachers' reasons for leaving: workload, pay, lack of autonomy. researchgate.net
- European Commission — Education & Training Monitor 2025 (Netherlands) — Staff shortages significant but improving. op.europa.eu
- Algemene Onderwijsbond (AOb) — Teacher shortage spreading nationwide; warnings since 2011. aob.nl