The Tories’ revolutionary schools and welfare policies are the way forward

13 October 2007

AFTER a disastrous three months, the worst is finally over for David Cameron and his Conservative Party.

Money will follow pupils; each child in these new privately managed schools will be funded to the tune of £5,263 per head, the average spending per pupil in state schools, with a significant extra top-up for the poorest children. Although its not quite a voucher system, Milton Friedman and FA Hayek would have been proud of Mr Gove; this is the most radical yet practical educational proposal ever endorsed by the Tories.

Letting a thousand schools bloom in this way would give ordinary parents and their children the sort of choice until now available only to those who can afford private school fees. The decision to offer an extra premium as an incentive for schools to take pupils from deprived backgrounds should also help rekindle the social mobility that is essential to any dynamic and just society.

One of the fundamental problems of the Brown years (during his time as Chancellor and now as Prime Minister) has been that too much money has been pumped into inefficient, unreformed, monopolistic public services, leading to spiralling public sector inflation. Cash spending on goods and services (excluding benefits and capital expenditure) surged by 94.1% in the 10 years to 2006-07, much faster than the rate of economic growth, while the real spending increase (after public sector inflation is stripped out) was a mere 28.1%, according to calculations by Ingenious Securities based on official statistics.