Schools are failing. Although exam grades keep rising, the performance of our children compares poorly both with similarly aged children in other countries and with previous generations. Politicians of both parties have made repeated efforts to dictate from the centre better discipline, more rigorous teaching and a tougher curriculum. It has not worked. It is time for a something different. direct-democracy.co.uk z Set schools free: central government should cease to dictate administration the and teaching policies to local schools. z The Right to Learn: parents of school aged children should be given a new legal right that would allow them to take their custom to schools not controlled by the state, carrying with them the money that would have been spent on their children by the Local Education Authority. This financial credit should be determined by the per capita average spent on each child by their local authority, according to the type of school. z Helping the most vulnerable: priority should be given to children with Special Educational Needs when implementing the reform, their financial entitlement again being equivalent to the sum spent per special needs child by the LEA. localist papers

Centre for Policy Sudies 57 Tufton Street London SW1P 3QL www.cps.org.uk www.direct-democracy.co.uk 2. Neighbourhood Education Direct democracy members The aim of the Centre for Policy Studies Adam Afriyie MP is to develop and promote policies that Richard Benyon MP provide freedom and encouragement Roger Bird for individuals to pursue the aspirations Martin Callanan MEP they have for themselves and their Douglas Carswell MP families, within the security and Paul Carter obligations of a stable and law-abiding Greg Clark MP nation. The views expressed in our Stephen Crabb MP publications are, however, the sole Philip Dunne MP responsibility of the authors. Murdo Fraser MSP Contributions are chosen for their value David Gauke MP in informing public debate and should Robert Goodwill MP not be taken as representing a corporate Michael Gove MP view of the CPS or of its Directors. The Andrew Griffith CPS values its independence and does Robert Halfon not carry on activities with the intention Stephen Hammond MP of affecting public support for any Daniel Hannan MEP registered political party or for Mark Harper MP candidates at election, or to influence Chris Heaton-Harris MEP voters in a referendum. Nick Herbert MP Adam Holloway MP Ed Howker Jeremy Hunt MP Stewart Jackson MP Syed Kamall MEP Direct Democracy is a group of 38 Scott Kelly Conservative MPs, MEPs, MSPs and Danny Kruger activists dedicated to the principles of Kwasi Kwarteng localism and the devolution of power. Ali Miraj The Localist Papers are an examination Brian Monteith of how these principles might apply to Brooks Newmark MP specific fields of policy. They are not Jesse Norman manifestoes, and not all our supporters Priti Patel endorse them in full. Rather, they Mike Penning MP explore some possible ways in which Mark Reckless power could be shifted from the Henry Smith bureaucracy of the central state to local James Sproule communities and individual citizens. Theresa Villiers MP

© Centre for Policy Studies, May 2007

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Printed by the Centre for Policy Studies, 57 Tufton Street, London SW1 Contents

1Summary 1 2 The true picture 2 3 Why schools fail 3 4 The Right’s mistake 5 5 Localism in schools 6 6 A legal entitlement for parents 7 7 Special Education Needs 7 8 How localism differs from a voucher 8 9 Encouraging provision 9 10 Axe the National Curriculum 11 11 Conclusion 11

The Localist Papers

Neighbourhood Education

1 Summary

spent on each child by their local Schools are failing. Although exam grades authority, according to the type of school. keep rising, the performance of our children compares poorly both with similarly aged ƒ Helping the most vulnerable: priority children in other countries and with previous should be given to children with Special generations. Politicians of all parties have Educational Needs when implementing made repeated efforts to dictate from the the reform, their financial entitlement centre better discipline, more rigorous again being equivalent to the sum spent teaching and a tougher curriculum. It has not per special needs child by the LEA. worked. It is time for something different. ƒ Set schools free: central government should cease to dictate administration and teaching policies to local schools. ƒ The Right to Learn: parents of school aged children should be given a new legal right that would allow them to take their custom to schools not controlled by the state, carrying with them the money that would have been spent on their children by the Local Education Authority. This financial credit should be determined by the per capita average 2 The Localist Papers: Neighbourhood Education

2 The true picture This alarming picture of failure in our education system has been hidden by changes Britain’s education system is failing. A gap in the exam and school testing systems. The has opened between the virtual world of tools for assessing a child’s performance rarely ever-improving GCSE results and the real involve measuring his or her performance world of remedial teaching offered by against other children nationally, and never universities and employers to bring school against similarly aged children in previous years leavers up to the standard of previous or in other countries. While the government generations. Consider the following statistics: trumpets improvements in exam grades, employers and university admissions tutors ƒ 75,000 children finish formal education report a sharp decline in standards. each year having failed to achieve five GCSEs at any grade, while one in ten 16 Exam grades are suffering inflation for the year-olds leaves school without a single same reason that currencies do: the qualification.1 government is too loose in its control of the supply.6 Too many pupils do too many exams ƒ Fewer than half of those sitting GCSE in designed to get them into too many English and Maths gained grades higher universities where there are too many degrees 2. than a D. on offer to too many students. ƒ A quarter of children leave primary The trouble is that it suits most people to go school without the necessary reading and along with the notion that humankind – at writing skills to tackle the secondary least in England and Wales – is getting 3 school curriculum, and three out of steadily cleverer. Schools like to trumpet their every ten children do not reach the levels grades. Teachers’ organisations like to point they need in English, Maths and Science to their success. Ministers like to pat 4 to sit their GCSEs. themselves on the back for their stewardship ƒ British schoolchildren have fallen of the system. Parents like to congratulate steadily down the league tables of their children. Pupils are understandably academic ability and are now close to the proud of their achievements. It would be a bottom of the class among the world’s brave politician who offended all these democracies.5. groups by pointing at international comparitors, or at old O-level questions that On top of poor academic standards, poor are now being recycled into A-level papers.7 standards of pupil behaviour have become endemic in many schools. Parents are So it is hardly surprising that, at the last beginning to realise what teachers have general election, there was almost no complained of for years: that adults are discussion of grade inflation, nor of the need losing control of the classroom. to develop effective vocational education to counter the rise in worthless degrees. Instead, politicians in all three parties trotted out their 1 The Spectator, 3 February 2007. usual promise to improve standards – while remaining remarkably coy about why they 2 The Sunday Telegraph, 21 January 2007. should be any better at this in the future than 3 Department for Education and Skills, Percentage of pupils they had been in the past. achieving Level 4 or above in 2003-2005 Key Stage 2 tests and Teacher Assessment (provisional), 2005.

4 Department for Education and Skills, National Curriculum assessments of 14-year-olds in England, 2005 (provisional), 2005. 6 In 1989, the mark needed for a C in GCSE Maths was 48%. By 2000, it had fallen to 18%. See The Sunday 5 Data from the US Institute for Educational Science Telegraph, 21 January, 2007. show that British 14 year olds are behind many other Western nations. Compared to European countries, 7 John Clare, then education editor of The Daily Telegraph, only Norway and Italy did worse. See The Sunday found a biology ‘A’-level paper in 1998 that contained the Telegraph, 21 January 2007. same questions as ‘O’-level papers from the late 1970s. The Localist Papers: Neighbourhood Education 3

As with academic standards, so with children go to school, what they learn there, orderliness in the classroom. The how they are taught it. Government Conservatives campaigned at the last election determines who can teach and how teachers on a promise of “school discipline”. Yet are trained. Government decides how many saying “school discipline” is one thing, hours your children spend on different achieving it is another. Rather as they did subjects, what they eat, how they behave. with healthcare (“cleaner hospitals”), the Conservatives were pledging something unexceptionable, but failing to explain to voters how they would implement it. “Having fought – and lost – the Having fought – and lost – the last General last General Election with an Election with an implausible promise rather than a policy, the Conservatives seem in implausible promise rather than a danger of making a similar mistake. Only policy, the Conservatives seem in now, instead of discipline, the new fetish is “synthetic phonics”. Again, the impression is danger of making a similar given that a Conservative education minister mistake.” would somehow be able to thrust his hand into every classroom in the land to impose his particular methods.8 But voters have had enough experience of the system to sense The state provides a near monopoly of that this claim is unrealistic. They naturally education. And as with any monopoly, those disregard it. who use the service – parents and children – In order to convince the country that they have little choice. That is why schools fail; really would ameliorate its schools, and that is why, when they fail, so little is politicians have to show how they would get done to put things right. from A to B. Anyone can promise higher The state monopoly means uniformity – and standards: it would be a very strange mediocrity – across the education system. politician who didn’t want more rigour, better The reins of big government have tightened discipline and more knowledgeable school with a national curriculum, the de facto leavers. What is missing is a comprehensive nationalisation of exam boards, and funding diagnosis of what is going wrong. Only when initiatives that dictate not simply what a the malady is properly understood can the school must do, but how it must do it. Most correct cure be prescribed. recently, a “sustainable schools” agenda now dictates the very shape of the school buildings and classrooms. 3 Why schools fail For all but the 7% who are able to afford a Our schools are failing because of too much private education, what ministers decide is government. Government decides how many what they have to accept. The vast majority schools there are in your area. Government of people in Britain are forced to take what draws up the rules that decide where your the government provides for their child and are expected to be grateful.

Education is thus a postcode lottery. That 8 See T Burkard, A world first for West Dunbartonshire, Centre for Policy Studies, 2006. phrase is often used loosely to indicate This paper demonstrated that, while synthetic regional disparities, but in this case it is phonics is undoubtedly the best way of teaching precisely apposite. The quality of a child’s children to read, it can most effectively be education can depend on his proximity to a introduced in schools through local initiatives – particular school; and local parents have very and not by central edict. 4 The Localist Papers: Neighbourhood Education

little opportunity to affect what happens schools may use to select their pupils, within that school. The system is a lottery, in including informal methods such as an a way that, say, varying levels of council tax interview or assessing the parents’ religious are not: these have to some degree been observance for faith-based schools. decided by local voters through their elected The most common form of selection for the councillors. majority of popular schools is a simple and objective one: the “proximity rule”, or catchment area. Catchment areas obviously “Too many of the ideas that mean that schools tend to reflect the community mix that lives around them. This politicians have about education is especially true of schools in rural areas. seek only to deal with the However, in towns and cities, catchment areas often make for less mixed schools. At consequences of a system that their worst, catchment areas can mean that the localities of good schools become lacks choice. Promising to impose enclaves of the rich, while areas around bad synthetic phonics, or a more schools become ghettos of the poor. Lauriston Primary School in Hackney, for rigorous curriculum, or healthier example, has a catchment area that extends eating, or more discipline, is to no more than 110 yards from the school gates. As a result, houses close to the school offer to make schools produce the sell for over £100,000 more than others down outcomes that parents want. Why the road. 9 not instead tackle the cause of the Catchment areas are simply a form of rationing limited resources – places in good problem, the inability of the schools. Too many parents want places in schools they perceive to be good, and not schools themselves to provide enough choose schools in places they what parents want? perceive to be bad. Arbitrary boundaries, therefore, are used to prevent parents taking their children out of one school and putting them into another. A few families, unable to afford to go private, and unhappy with their local school, Rather than have a system that simply rations might still be able to afford to move home. the limited number of places in good schools, But this minority is not large, and indicative why not have one that increases the number of a greater number who are unhappy but do of good schools and the number of places in not complain. Each year around one in 10 such schools? parents appeals against a local authority Too many of the ideas that politicians have decision to send a child to a particular about education seek only to deal with the school, though only a quarter of those consequences of a system that lacks choice. appeals is upheld. The problem is more acute Promising to impose synthetic phonics, or a in inner cities, where nearly 20% of more rigorous curriculum, or healthier eating, admission decisions are appealed against, but or more discipline, is to offer to make schools less than a fifth of appeals is successful. produce the outcomes that parents want. Over-subscription requires popular schools Why not instead tackle the cause of the to introduce admissions criteria to enable them to choose between applicants. There is a variety of non-academic methods which 9 See “Price of living in the right catchment area”, The Evening Standard, 25 October 2005. The Localist Papers: Neighbourhood Education 5

problem: the inability of the schools may be painful for children who are displaced themselves to provide what parents want? and forced to settle in somewhere new. But Rather than politicians promising to give how much worse is it to leave a failing school parents what they want, why not give parents open, blighting the prospects of generation the ability to ensure that schools provide after generation? their children with a real education? It is true, too, that some parents will be more In short, having diagnosed the problem as involved than others in choosing their child’s bad management by the state, we need to school. Yet parental choice, with all its prescribe a specific remedy. implied inequalities, still means a greater identification with children’s interests than state allocation. If you doubt this, consider 4 The Right’s mistake the extraordinary revelation that school places in Brighton are being distributed by lottery. In Aha, you cry, but there is a specific remedy. other words, one of the most important It has been kicking around for more than developments in a child’s life is dependent on half a century and, although it has been blind chance. applied in practice in very few instances, these instances have on the whole been All these arguments have merit. But the hugely successful. policy of “school choice” has two serious drawbacks, one strategic and one tactical. The remedy is to set all schools free from state control, to allow them to compete for The strategic drawback is that any national custom, and to provide prospective parents voucher scheme is open to being manipulated, with the wherewithal to use them in the distorted or terminated by an ill-disposed form of education credits. government. Schools can be brought relatively painlessly back under state direction, as we For a long time, conservatives called this found after the 1997 election when Labour policy “vouchers”. Then, finding that voters abolished Grant Maintained School status. found the v-word intimidating and wonkish, they shifted their language. Today, they Even if a future government shied away from prefer to talk about “choice”. outright abolition, there would be many ways in which it could traduce a voucher scheme, V-word or c-word, the policy has obvious for example by making schools follow a attractions. In every other sphere of life, the certain curriculum or particular admissions removal of government tends to lead to policies in order to qualify. New Labour has enterprise, diversity and growth. We no already set such a precedent in the field of longer expect politicians to be especially higher education, obliging universities to good at building cars or installing telephones, follow particular admissions criteria in order so why should they be any better at running to be eligible for the income from tuition schools? fees. Even more strikingly, it has done the In any case, no minister, however well- same with nursery vouchers, on one occasion disposed, can anticipate the needs and threatening to withdraw its recognition from interests of every child in the land. That a nursery because it was spending too much child’s parents will, in general, be better time teaching infants to read. placed to judge his or her needs. And The tactical objection is, quite simply, that schools, freed from the expense and the voters don’t seem especially keen on freedom nuisance of state targets and LEA meddling, when applied to the field of education. “I will be able to focus their attention on their don’t want choice,” is a frequently heard primary task. complaint, “what I want is a good school at True, some bad schools could fold for lack the end of my road”. Vainly does the of custom, and the impact of such closures politician protest that choice is there precisely 6 The Localist Papers: Neighbourhood Education

as a mechanism to lift standards. Vainly does Margaret Thatcher’s Government shifted most he try to convince the voter that, if all of the housing stock from the state to the restaurants were owned by the state, their independent sector, not by a mass privatisation food would be indifferent, and that it is scheme, but by entitling council tenants to buy precisely because we are able to choose their way out of government control. The which restaurant to patronise that we are policy of council house sales was the most likely to have a decent one “at the end of our successful of all the Thatcher privatisations for road”. By the time a candidate finds himself two reasons. First, it was more popular than making these arguments, he has already lost. the later sell-offs. Council house sales were accomplished with almost none of the controversy that attended the sale of, for 5 Localism in schools example, water or rail companies. Second, and partly as a consequence, it was effectively How, then, can we solve the problems irreversible. It is conceivable that a future inherent in a state monopoly while taking government could renationalise other utilities, account of these two objections? Is there a as has already happened to Railtrack. But it is way to increase school freedom and to raise impossible to imagine the mass expropriation standards without a full-scale voucher of now privately owned homes. scheme? And can such a policy be made, not just electorally saleable, but positively Unusually, a government of the Right did popular? something that is more commonly achieved by the Left: it created a corpus of voters with a For an answer, it is instructive to consider vested interest in maintaining its legacy. What what was arguably the most popular policy of Labour Governments have done with huge the last Conservative Government, namely success by expanding the state payroll, swelling the sale of council houses. welfare dependency and creating quangos to maintain their statutes, the Tories have done just once, in the field of housing. “The equivalent to the sale of Applied to the field of education, the council houses would be to give traditional voucher scheme may be likened to the mass privatisations of the later Thatcher every parent with a school-age years. The equivalent to the sale of council houses would be to give every parent with child the right to demand, from his school-age children the right to demand, from local authority, the sum that it his local authority, the sum that it would have spent on the child, and to take that sum where would have spent on that child, he or she pleases. and to take that sum where he This sum would plainly vary according to the pleases.” age and circumstances of the child. To reach a rough equivalence, primary and secondary schools and sixth-form colleges should be differentiated, as should Special Schools. Each For much of the 20th century, the provision child would be entitled to the average spent of housing was seen, as the provision of per pupil in the appropriate sector – calculated education is today, as chiefly an activity for by dividing the entire budget by the number of the state. Of course there was private children in the system, and without making housing, just as there are private schools. But any deductions (the salaries of LEA officials, most people expected to look, in the first for example, should be counted as part of the instance, to their local authority. budget). The Localist Papers: Neighbourhood Education 7

6 A legal entitlement for schools which are best suited to a child’s circumstances. Once the principle is seen to parents be working, the same right could be swiftly extended to all parents. This would also Currently, parents may apply to state schools anticipate the reflexive complaint about any in their area in a process which is mediated by loosening up of the education monopoly, the Local Education Authority, which also namely that such freedom is simply a way to funds local schools. Some parents are happy subsidise Eton and Harrow fees. with this arrangement. Many, however, are plainly not, as may be seen both from opinion The extent to which parents of children with surveys and from the number of appeals special needs have no choice has been against the allocation of school places. Parents highlighted by the controversy over the who want to opt out should be given direct closure of Special Schools. While many control over their child’s share of the funds. parents of children with special needs prefer their child to attend a Special School, The precise mechanism by which that educationalists have favoured “inclusion” – a control is exercised, and the definition of policy of aggressively integrating those with “their child’s share”, need not be laid down special needs into mainstream schools at by Whitehall. Once a legal right has been almost any cost to the wellbeing of the child. enshrined, it could be left to parents, using the courts and judicial fiat, to do the rest – A relatively simple change could ensure that that is, to determine how a local authority children with special needs had a form of should meet its legal obligation. legal entitlement. The “statementing” process, through which the needs of the child are If a local authority does not believe that assessed by local education officials, could be funds received by parents are being used for modified. Instead of merely stating what level the purposes of education, as laid down in of additional help and support a child with primary legislation, it should be for a court special needs was entitled to, as at present, to decide this matter – just as a court decides statementing could be changed to include a whether a car sold to a customer is fit for level of financial entitlement to which the purpose in the event of a dispute. Before the child’s parent could lay claim. regulatory age, this is how such matters were decided, across a whole range of applications This would not simply resolve the present in the UK. It was an approach compatible debate as to the merits or otherwise of with our common law system and it was including special needs children in mainstream successful. schools, but it would also open the way towards a general system of entitlement. Parents have a moral right to decide how their children should be educated. We should Introducing this system of entitlement to enshrine this right in law. Anything more children with special needs first would risks wrapping up an ostensibly liberated demonstrate that an entitlement based system system in unnecessary regulation. benefited the most vulnerable. It would help those with special needs in many ways. At present Local Education Authorities use 7 Special Education Needs the statementing process both to assess Implementation of this scheme can best be children’s needs and also (in theory) ensure started with children who have statements of that those needs are then met. Obviously this Special Education Needs. These children can create a conflict of interest. The more have been most failed by the status quo. It is specific the assessment, the greater burden of here that parents are suffering most from the provision the local authority can create for existing system, and where there is the itself. All too often, Local Education strongest demand for the right to pick the Authorities try to wriggle out of this conflict 8 The Localist Papers: Neighbourhood Education

of interest by either not issuing statements host of reasons, the provision outlined in or, when they do, ensuring that the statements is not actually given to the child. statements are vague about the precise level Without an increase in the £4.5 billion spent of provision the child needs. on SEN each year, turning the statementing process into a form of financial entitlement Faced with this, those parents who are able would ensure that money allocated to SEN to are all too often forced to take an was spent on providing those services. adversarial stance against their Local Parents would not need to fight a complex Education Authority in order to ensure that system to gain what would become their the local authority both makes a fair automatic right. It would be for parents, not assessment of need, and then meets the LEA officials, to decide if a child should be in needs identified.10 a special school or mainstream. There would Recognising how unsatisfactory the system not be an explosion in the SEN budget, but a is, some commentators have suggested that more effective allocation of that budget. some form of independent assessor should What if more parents started to demand the take over from the LEAs. Converting the rights enjoyed by parents of children with statement into a form of financial statements? It is true that some parents might entitlement, where the pot of special needs start to demand the same rights to control funding assigned to the individual child their child’s pot of money as those with followed the child, would at a stroke solve statements – and all the better if they did. It the adversarial nature of the current system. would demonstrate that the scheme worked There would be no need to set up yet and that choice helped the more vulnerable another independent assessor or quango in the most. the hope that its decisions would be any more acceptable to disgruntled parents. Making statements a form of financial 8 How localism differs entitlement would solve the real cause of the current problem (a lack of parental control) from a voucher rather than treat one of its symptoms A voucher scheme is a national mechanism; a (unpopular councils). local opt-out is a legal right. In other words, Would such a scheme not massively expand localism avoids the complicated and technical the pressure to increase SEN funding? At questions of how to administer a school present £4.5 billion a year is spent on choice programme. It specifies the outcome providing Special Education Needs, and of rather than the process. that total, some 69% of resources go to To return to the council house sales analogy, children with statements.11 Our proposal would not per se require any expansion in this the Thatcher government did not remove budget. It would, however, ensure that the housing stock from local authorities and then budget was spent on delivering SEN to seek to allocate one home per applicant. children who needed it. Rather, it gave people the right to buy, and then trusted to the wisdom of the market to At the moment, money allocated to SEN do the rest. gets lost in mainstream school budgets. For a The closest overseas equivalent to what we propose can be found in Denmark. In the 19th century, an education minister with a Lutheran 10 The House of Commons Education Select Committee’s background introduced the principle of match recent report on special needs noted how the current funding for independently run schools. This system disadvantages the socio-economically deprived the most. principle has been respected in subsequent legislation, most recently the 1991 reforms, 11 The Audit Commission, Special Educational Needs: a mainstream issue, November 2002. which specify that pupils in private schools The Localist Papers: Neighbourhood Education 9

should get the per capita average being spent past 74 years. During one of the short within the state system. Around 13% of intermissions in 1992, Carl Bildt’s short-lived Danish children are in such schools, and there Centre-Right Government introduced a is a broad consensus that their existence municipal school choice policy. Again, the pushes up standards in the state schools. central government confined itself to laying Private schools are allowed to levy top-up down the overall objective, leaving local fees, although these are usually less than councils to decide how to implement the £1,000 a year. scheme. Initially, the entitlement was for 85% of the cost of a state place. When the Social Precisely because the Danish system is not a Democrats returned to power, they increased nationally controlled voucher, it is largely the value to 100%, but banned top-up fees. immune to government manipulation. The Although they had opposed the scheme in Danish state cannot demand that opposition, they found it politically independent schools follow a particular impractical to scrap it when in power. approach to, say, religious instruction or citizenship classes. Its role is limited to As well as durability, the localisation of the ensuring that pupils at these schools meet scheme offers the advantage of pluralism. the required standards in public Different approaches can be trialled, and examinations. In other words, it lays down a those that are most successful can be copied, minimal regulation of outcomes, but does so that best practice spreads. And, because not busy itself with process. bureaucracies tend to become more remote and less efficient in proportion to their size, a This, incidentally, is the answer to one of the local entitlement would almost certainly more commonly asked questions about prove more cost-effective than a nationally autonomous schools, namely: “would administered voucher scheme. parents be allowed to claim their financial entitlement and then send their children to Giving parents a new legal right to control the Osama bin Laden Madrassah?” Provided their share of local authority funding could that children were reaching the required involve a so-called “deadweight cost”. The educational standards, it would not be up to deadweight cost means the cost of meeting the invigilators to concern themselves with part of the outlay of those parents who the values or ethos of the school, except currently already pay for private schools. insofar as these infracted the law. A school Supporters of school choice should be honest that was stirring up racial or religious hatred about this. The policy depends upon a rapid would be breaking, not just the recent expansion of provision – something which, in legislation specifically defining these crimes, turn, relies on existing providers having the but the much older law against incitement. If means and incentive to expand. this were to happen, it would be a matter, not for the local council, but for the police. 9 Encouraging provision It is no coincidence that the Danish system has proved so durable. Although the Social In order to encourage new providers to come Democrats have dominated political life in forward and offer new places, there will need that country, emerging as the largest party at to be further amendments to current education every post-war election until 2001, the party policy. First, the Surplus Places Rule will need cannot afford to alienate the parents of that to be abolished, so that good schools can 13% who use independent schools at no grow. Of course, many schools do not wish to additional cost to the taxpayer. It is a fight grow – and many schools are unable to, at not worth having. least on their existing sites. However, it is noteworthy that the number of children The same is true of Sweden, where the Social attending Britain’s grammar schools grew by Democrats have been in power for 66 of the over a third between 1993 and 2003. This is 10 The Localist Papers: Neighbourhood Education

equivalent to 46 new grammar schools – but (including capital costs) on the same basis as on the existing sites, for no new grammar state schools: in consequence, nearly 70% of schools have been created in that period. This Dutch schools are independent. shows what can be done in response to local Britain should follow these examples. Indeed, pressure on the best schools in an area. it would be following its own history: public At present, planning rules deter existing education in this country arose as the private schools from expanding, and new schools initiative of religious and charitable from being established. There would need to foundations. Many state-funded schools be a review of planning rules to make it today, even if they are subject to direction easier to obtain local planning permission from central and local government, are from the local authority than at present. nominally owned and run by independent institutions, including churches, charities and Liberating state schools would also allow the private businesses. They need to be liberated all-important freedom to fail. Schools which once again – and subjected to the healthy did not attract sufficient children would not, competition of new entrants. as at present, be propped up by the government and allowed to persist in Because of the effect of the government near- mediocrity, to the permanent damage of monopoly, private initiative in education has those children (often from the most been dormant for decades – but it can be marginalised families) who still attended. awakened. In the 15 years since per capita Failure would see the school transferred to funding entitlement was introduced in alternative management, or sold and the Sweden, the number of independent schools proceeds applied to other local schools. has more than quadrupled. And in Britain there is considerable commercial and As with healthcare, the presence of an philanthropic appetite for setting up new enormous government near-monopoly schools. means that the private market is highly inefficient. Private schools are niche In line with international experience we can providers of expensive education to a expect a large proportion of new entrants to privileged few, protected by the weight of be charitable concerns, whether religious demand from having to innovate (and still foundations or otherwise. Evidence from less from cutting their prices) to attract new America, in particular – where charter schools custom. Most parents say that they would are forbidden from distributing profits, which use private education if they could afford it – shows that it is not the profit motive which but most cannot, because costs keep on has driven progress – suggests that there is a rising. Private school fees rose almost 10% largely untapped reservoir of money, energy between 2002 and 2003, yet the total number and talent in Britain ready to be committed to of pupils at those schools rose by only 0.1%. education for education’s sake. Transferring state schools into the However, there should be no objection to the independent sector will open them up to profit principle in education. Financiers competition from new entrants. Here other looking for a return on investments would be countries show the way. In the United States, a natural source of the capital needed for the independently-run, non-profit, non-religious establishment of new schools, which would charter schools may be established at the otherwise have to come from the taxpayer; behest of local parents, their charters being and shareholders are the most effective awarded by local government, the local guarantee of high standards and good university or dedicated charter boards. In the management. In Sweden, chains of profit- Netherlands, the country’s constitution making schools, educating tax-funded pupils, allows any non-profit school run by parents, are a particular feature of the system. a charity or church to receive funding The Localist Papers: Neighbourhood Education 11

10 Axe the National Parliament, in other words, should confine itself to setting down the basics of what we Curriculum expect pupils to know when they leave the classroom for the last time. As to how to get As well as facilitating the development of new there, MPs have no more expertise than schools, central government would relinquish anyone else. Schools themselves are best the right to dictate the syllabus. This means placed to see what works. Some of their abolishing the national curriculum. The national curriculum – which was originally intended to stop wacky left-wing “Thus, millions of individual teachers filling children’s heads with nonsense – has been captured by the very decisions, made by those with the people it was supposed to frustrate. It is now strongest possible interest in the a principal method by which the left-leaning educational establishment imposes its welfare of their own children, will orthodoxies on schools. It is so large that serve to police and improve the there is insufficient time in the school day for alternative lessons or subjects, and system. No minister, be he the teachers complain that their professional discretion is curtailed. best and wisest in Whitehall, can Exams should be the method by which achieve so much... Give parents schools’ curricula are kept up to the mark. local control, and they will do the Private prep schools have no national curriculum, but they know that their rest.” reputation rests on their pupils’ success in the Common Entrance exams. Standards and initiatives will be more successful than others. commonality will be better preserved in a Provided that parents are free to pick the liberal system than a closed one. schools that they judge the most successful, best practice will spread. Thus, millions of individual decisions, made by 11 Conclusion those with the strongest possible interest in the The idea of localism in education reflects the welfare of their own children, will serve to philosophy that infuses the entire Direct police and improve the system. No minister, Democracy agenda. We believe that be he the best and wisest in Whitehall, can decisions should be exercised as closely as achieve so much. No committee, no hundred possible to the people they affect, and that committees sitting night and day, can deliver power should be devolved to the lowest such an outcome. Give parents local control, practicable unit. When it comes to picking a and they will do the rest. school, that unit is the individual parent. When it comes to deciding what a school should teach, what admissions criteria it should apply, what uniform policy it should adopt and so on, the unit is the school. When it comes to the financing and invigilation of the system, the unit is the county or city. Only when it comes to specifying the overall level of attainment expected by school leavers is there a role for central government. Schools are failing. Although exam grades keep rising, the performance of our children compares poorly both with similarly aged children in other countries and with previous generations. Politicians of both parties have made repeated efforts to dictate from the centre direct-democracy.co.uk better discipline, more rigorous teaching and a tougher curriculum. It has not worked. It is time for a something different. the z Set schools free: central government should cease to dictate administration and teaching policies to local schools. z The Right to Learn: parents of school aged children should be given a new legal right that would allow them to take their custom to schools not controlled by the state, carrying with them the money that would have been spent on their children by the Local Education Authority. This financial credit should be determined by the per capita average spent on each child by their local authority, according to the type of school. localist z Helping the most vulnerable: priority should be given to children with Special Educational Needs when implementing the reform, their financial entitlement again being equivalent to the sum spent per special needs child by the LEA. papers ISBN 1 905389 47 7

Centre for Policy Sudies 57 Tufton Street London SW1P 3QL www.cps.org.uk www.direct-democracy.co.uk 1. Neighbourhood Education