Made in Sweden: the new Tory education revolution

Fraser Nelson reports on the radical Swedish system of independent state schools, financed by vouchers, that has transformed the country’s education performance and is now inspiring the Conservative party’s dramatic blueprint for British schools: to set them free

This summer, at least 25,000 children will drop out of English schools without a single qualification to show for their years of compulsory education. Some 240,000 will graduate from primary school unable to read or write properly. By autumn, some 250 schools judged to be failing will welcome an intake of new pupils. Youth unemployment will probably hit an 11-year high. It will, tragically, be just another year in one of the world’s highest-funded education systems.

Two strategies are available to David Cameron in addressing this scandal, should he get to No. 10. He could perform his own surgery on the comprehensive system pretending, as all prime ministers pretend, that he can actually control it. The Local Education Authorities, with whom the power rests, would almost certainly ignore him, as they did Tony Blair. But the second policy would be a new one. He would invite anyone to set up a new state school, run it independently of government, and receive a sum likely to be more than £6,000 a pupil.

He would, in short, seek to bring the Swedish education revolution to Britain. When Mr Cameron first promised to do this at the Tory conference in Blackpool (along with Wisconsin-style welfare reform), it sounded a rather abstract idea, the stuff of think-tank seminars rather than everyday life. Yet in the last five months Michael Gove, the shadow schools secretary, has been carefully designing a blueprint which would enable the establishment of a new breed of local independent schools, funded by the state but not run by it. It is potentially a plan of huge significance.