Privatising school education

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Scottish Conservatives have laid out "radical" plans for education to "break the state monopoly of educational provision".

Speaking yesterday, Conservative Shadow Minister for Children, Schools & Skills Liz Smith called for new, independently run free schools which can compete with the existing local authority schools.

These schools would remain state funded and would not be allowed to charge fees or to become selective. In some cases, they could be run by educational charities, not for profit trusts or by other philanthropic bodies.

She said: "We need to take power away from the politicians and start trusting teachers and head-teachers.

"If we want standards to go up, we must break the current monopoly the state has over the provision of education, give teachers more control and give parents more choice."

Smith warned that nothing would change if politicians remained obsessed with a one-size-fits-all policy for councils. She added that the current system of comprehensive education claiming that it: "confuses the principles of equality of opportunity with uniformity and it stifles any moves towards a more flexible and efficient system which is better suited to the needs of individual schools, and which allows maximum parental choice."

But COSLA said that local government was deeply unconvinced by the Conservative's proposals.

"Scotland's education system is rooted in our culture and is built upon a strong sense of community, underpinned by the local democratic process," a spokesman for the local government body said.

"Schools are part of a community and deliver services to the whole community, so they should be accountable to the whole community. Only local authorities can perform this function.

"We have a way of working in Scotland that has stood the test of time. Scotland's education is good, but does need to improve. Improving the lives of Scotland's most vulnerable children therefore depends not on schools 'opting out' but on tacking the complex social problems which we know all too well. Local authorities in Scotland are doing this day in day out and the conservative proposals do nothing to achieve this."