It won’t get as much attention as it should because of today’s announcement on spending by the Tories, but Michael Gove’s speech this evening pledging to allow state schools to choose alternative exams to GCSEs and A-Levels is important. It offers a way away from the race to bottom in examination standards that has so bedevilled the education system in recent years. It will also be a genuinely meritocratic reform; no longer will it just be pupils from independent schools who have access to things like the IB, the Pre-U and IGCSES.
Education is the policy area where the Tories are most consistently innovative. The fluency of their thinking on the issue comes from the fact that they are operating out of a coherent intellectual framework, a belief that choice drives up standards and that centralised planning doesn’t work.
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