How Cameron can win a second term

pabw

Good article Fraser but what "basic tests" do you envisage?

Tiberius

This is good stuff of course, but as well as improvement to the structure, there has to be a move from "soft" to "hard" in exam marking and syllabus content. I wonder whether we have enough dedicated teachers, certainly in the short term, to deliver a rigorous regime of, say, science and modern languages. (I can't see that the Green paper refers to this issue). Any idea whether Sweden had any such difficulties, Fraser?

Simon Hayes Budgen

Education vouchers, then. Not such a very radical idea after all. Fraser, could you explain the contradiction in how this scheme would work - if every pupil is worth £5,500, then how would poor kids be worth more to teach? Trouble is, didn't the Tories try this in the training sector, without very spectacular results?

John Backhouse

The big problem with this is that the state machine would do all it could to undermine the experiment. The department of education, teachers' unions, health and safety, planning, treasury officials et al would be so many obstacles in the way that the schemes would be hamstrung. Fire most of these useless beggars first and you've a chance (and some more money to put into it to boot).

Fraser Nelson

pabw, your question cuts to the heart of whether the scheme is viable. I'd define "basic tests" should mean safe building, basic curriculum. But such tests should be set by national government, as local government would blackball new schools on 'elf and safety grounds - or erect insurmountable barriers wich as minimum width of corridors, or a playing ground etc. In Sweden, the new schools are often former office blocks. The real test is whether parents consider the school worth sending kids to. Simon, we're have to agree to disagree whether the voucher system (in effect what the Swedish model is) qualifies as raidical. I consider it nothing less than revolutionary: a switch from top-down to bottom-up. The Tories havent told us yet how pupils would be priced, but the UK average is £5,500 and the Tories (I think im right in saying) would place a premium on pupils in more deprived areas. The state system means choice is open to those rich enough to afford a house price in the right area so they are less of a priority. It's the poor who have been the worst betrayed by Labour's comprehensive education disaster, and they who need new schools first. And as for precedents, supply-side school reform has been tried from Chile to the Netherlands, with spectacular results. More details here www.amazon.com/America-Learn-School-Choice-Countries/dp/1930865759

Fraser Nelson

John, it's easy: you cut them out of the equation. The state just writes the cheque. As long as the planning/approval department is centrally run, there's no need for any to get involved. They don't need to be fired.

Max Kaye

Anything that frees education from the clutches of the state is a good thing.

Michael McGowan

Fraser, I will believe this when I see it. This country, including large sections of the Tory Party, is addicted to the Stalinist delivery of public services. For most people in this country, social justice = levelling everyone down to a drab and authoritarian lowest common denominator. The left and many Tories will also use the twin bogeymen of faith schools and pushy middle class parents playing the system to attack this proposal.

David Lindsay

On one level, I am tempted to say that the state education sector is none of the Tories’ business, and that that is all there is to it. In health, we see the very underrated Alan Johnson moving away from Tony Blair’s Howard Hughes-like fear of the “dirty” public sector. That moving away cannot possibly happen too quickly across all policy areas. But in education, the parties are now engaged in a bidding war to see who can move closest to promising the all-out abolition of state schools as such, with schools instead functioning as universities used to: the State will merely pay the fees of most pupils at what will in fact be private institutions. Means testing will follow rapidly after that, and then up-front payment of fees, or the replacement of State payment with loans, or some combination of the two. Except for viewers in Scotland. Of course. And isn’t it telling that Balls (who mysteriously fails to mention his public school in his Who's Who entry), public school Cameron and public school Gove are all dead against grammar schools and instead in favour of selection by parental income. Although, to be fair, Balls at least wants to keep the grammar schools that there already are, illogical though that is within his wider position. The Tories’ more consistent desire to scrap even those, in the best tradition of Margaret Thatcher, is why Adonis did not defect to them a few months ago.

TGF UKIP

Fraser as a conservative free marketeer I'm all in favour, but why not just be simpler and quicker and say "vouchers." John Backhouse and Michael McGowan both make excellent points on the likely resistance to any such market response and I'm not sure your response to John "you just cut them out of the equation" really holds up. For one thing I would think it would require a wholesale re-writing of Planning Law (write off 5 yrs min) and on the other it would cut across "handing powers back to Local Authorities." The other very praactical obstacle I can foresee is land/building availability at a viable cost. Looking at the land mass/population equation for the UK and Sweden I would lay a large bet that UK property is relatively vastly more expensive. However, in any event this answer is glib and superficially persuasive PR but the reality, which real political leadership would attempt to get the public to face up to, is that rectifying decades of warped values in teacher training, toleration of poor teaching standards, toleration of poor school disciplinary requirements and a softening and distorting of examination standards, is going to be a decades long job for a very determined government.

J H Holloway

Mrs T didn't scrap grammars. When she took over Education, she farmed the decision back out to the local level, hoping that local pressure would keep the schools open. In fact, lefty local councils just used the power to demolish even more grammars than before, when Whitehall was in charge.

John Ionides

I share your enthusiasm for the general idea, Fraser, but there are two big issues that need to be addressed in detail; what happens if a school starts loosing significant numbers of pupils (who underwrites the salaries and capital expenditure when income from pupils falls) and what you do with those who are excluded on behavioral grounds (which, if I understand correctly, is the one area in which "selection" would be permitted). There is also the gritty detail of the funding, but that looks a lot more tractable.

Fraser Nelson

Michael, its very hard to attack: who could be against communities organising to set up their own schools? Labour's rebuttal today was quite mild ("how will the poor LEAs plan..." showing whose side they are on). TGIF, the phrase "vouchers" has too many connotations and doesn't quite fit what Cameron proposes. You cant top up the voucher, for example, it wont actually exist in any form, and its more like direct-grant schools. Also it allows Labour to say "what use is a piece of paper when you want a good school" thus misrepresenting the idea. Reforming UK planning law would take years, which is why a new law is needed just for pioneer schools. You're right in that DC's scheme will live or die by the strength of the planning proposal. And as for land - us Brits have been trained to think of schools as Grange Hill institutions of 1,000-plus pupils. Cameron's system would likely be a return to smaller, boutique schools. The voucher system works well in the Netherlands, the only country in Europe more densely-populated than England. Your last point is the most important. Try to change education from the top, and it will indeed be a decades-long improvement. That's why Cameron's health plans will go nowhere, and probably make the NHS even worse. But change from the bottom - new schools opening from scratch - can really make progress at a speed we've been conditioned into thinking is impossible. I say this will bag DC's second term because I genuinely believe the difference will be felt by the end of his first term. Finally John, class sizes have been static since 1979. These new schools would simply reduce class sizes. Special needs kids already have £23,000 a year spent on their education, and it can be spent a lot quicker. I agree that the toughest part of this is to close unpopular schools.

Fraser Nelson

Michael, its very hard to attack: who could be against communities organising to set up their own schools? Labour's rebuttal today was quite mild ("how will the poor LEAs plan..." showing whose side they are on). TGIF, the phrase "vouchers" has too many connotations and doesn't quite fit what Cameron proposes. You cant top up the voucher, for example, it wont actually exist in any form, and its more like direct-grant schools. Also it allows Labour to say "what use is a piece of paper when you want a good school" thus misrepresenting the idea. Reforming UK planning law would take years, which is why a new law is needed just for pioneer schools. You're right in that DC's scheme will live or die by the strength of the planning proposal. And as for land - us Brits have been trained to think of schools as Grange Hill institutions of 1,000-plus pupils. Cameron's system would likely be a return to smaller, boutique schools. The voucher system works well in the Netherlands, the only country in Europe more densely-populated than England. Your last point is the most important. Try to change education from the top, and it will indeed be a decades-long improvement. That's why Cameron's health plans will go nowhere, and probably make the NHS even worse. But change from the bottom - new schools opening from scratch - can really make progress at a speed we've been conditioned into thinking is impossible. I say this will bag DC's second term because I genuinely believe the difference will be felt by the end of his first term. Finally John, class sizes have been static since 1979. These new schools would simply reduce class sizes. Special needs kids already have £23,000 a year spent on their education, and it can be spent a lot better if the parents have control. I agree that the toughest part of this is to close unpopular schools.

Tiberius

I recommend a good piece in the DT today by Bernice McCabe, which I feel goes some way to answering my earlier post about teachers.

Michael McGowan

I hope you are right, Fraser, I hope you are right. I don't have time to wait: my children are already 12 and 9. Whether they will have time to wait too when it comes to the turn of their children is questionable. It is impossible to be too cynical when dealing with politicians of all parties and our state education system.

David Lindsay

J H Holloway, didn't she realise that that was what they would do if she "farmed" the matter back to them? Anyway, Tory LEAs were (and mostly still are) just as hostile to grammar schools; the Tories really don't see the point of state schools at all. Thatcher made no effort to restore grammar schools during her very long period as PM, either. It is a question for Labour and the Tories alike why the Tories never did the first thing, in 18 years, to bring back grammar schools. And why Gove is still ruling them out now.

Roger Thornhill

David Cameron promises 200,000 more places, but how can he? The best he can do is kick down the barbed wire and clear the minefields laid by the LEAs that prevents new schools from being set up and let it happen organically. Any other mechanism will just introduce a new form of bureaucracy or permit the LEAs to drag their feet.

Fraser Nelson

Roger, you're dead right. Its daft of Cameron to put a number on that. The whole point about his system is that you cant have targets or control it! So he still has some learning to do.