Labour's 1997 manifesto promised 'to make education our number one priority'. But after seven years, and a 40% increase in public spending, standards in education remain unacceptably low.
A third of all 11 year-olds leave primary school unable to read, write or count properly. More than a million children play truant every year.
A third of teachers believe they will no longer be teaching in five years' time. They give two principal reasons for wishing to leave the profession. The first is the workload resulting from unnecessary bureaucracy. According to a recent poll, 92% of teachers think that the amount of red tape they have to comply with reduces the amount of time they have for preparing lessons. Last year, the Government sent schools 2,280 pages of guidance – 12 pages for every working day.
The second reason teachers give for leaving the profession is worsening pupil behaviour. Two-thirds of teachers believe standards of discipline in secondary schools are falling. One reason for this has been the creation of outside Appeals Panels empowered to overturn heads' decisions to expel disruptive pupils. The authority of schools over discipline has been undermined. As a direct result, during Labour's first term the number of serious assaults on teachers rose fivefold.
Parents naturally respond to low school standards by seeking alternatives. Some are able to move house into the catchment area of a good school. Others are lucky in the lottery of the admissions appeal system. Some take the decision to leave the State system entirely.
But for many parents, there are no alternatives. Millions of pupils are trapped in under-performing schools – left behind while their more fortunate peers get the start in life that should be the right of all British children. Opportunities are limited by the unavailability of alternative schools and by Government attempts – notably through the Admissions Co-ordination procedure being introduced across England – to restrict parental choice further.
There are three problems we mean to solve.
First, parents are not in charge of their children's schooling. Choice is restricted to the few. Most children must go to the school chosen for them by the local council. Money is allocated to schools not according to parental choices but according to a mass of confused and confusing funding streams, schemes and targets.
Second, heads and teachers are not free to run their own schools. Research and common sense indicate that the best-performing schools are those in which the head teacher is free to make a difference and in which teachers can tailor their lessons to the children in their charge. Yet schools are burdened with red tape and external instructions.
Third, the Government continues to control the supply of schooling. The attitude persists that all children must be educated together in large, one-size-fits-all, State institutions. The diversity of interests and aptitudes of our children is not given expression in our schools. Innovative new ideas
are not admitted to the system except by the authority of Whitehall. There are not enough good alternative schools to give parents real choice.
Conservatives are determined to overcome these three problems directly.
Rather than restricting further the choice which is currently enjoyed only by the few, we will extend that choice to the many.
We will set heads and teachers free from Government interference and bureaucracy.
And we will allow new suppliers of education – charities, businesses, groups of parents or teachers – to establish schools for taxpayer-funded pupils.
