THE Conservatives revealed plans yesterday to allow parents to use state funds to set up new schools or take over existing ones under private, charitable or community management.
Damian Green, the Shadow Education Secretary, likened the policy to Margaret Thatcher’s legislation to allow tenants to buy their council houses and said that it would transform the education system.
He told the Conservative conference in Blackpool that it would lead to more grammar schools opening for the first time in a generation.
The right to set up a school would be open to all parents in England, although initially it would be aimed at inner-city schools where problems were more acute, he said.
It would cost £400 million a year in current and capital spending in inner cities, he said, which would be funded by transferring money from the 66 separate funding streams within the existing school budget of £29 billion, he said.
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Mr Green told The Times that he could not say how he would fund an extension of the policy nationwide, saying that might be eight years away and it was impossible to predict the level of school funding then. He estimated that it might cost a further £2 billion.
Similar proposals were unveiled by the Conservatives this year under the title state scholarships, which were to be confined to inner-city schools.
Yesterday’s announcement, in which the policy was repackaged as the better schools passport, was a significant expansion of the idea to give it a more universal appeal.
Mr Green told the conference: “Our party is at its best when it spreads wealth and opportunity. Twenty years ago we gave millions of people the first chance to buy their council house and gain control over their lives.
“We, the Conservative Party, will now give millions of parents their first chance to choose a school they really want for their children and to gain control over how their children learn.”
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He added: “Under this scheme we will see new grammar schools opening for the first time in a generation. They will provide a ladder out of deprivation for thousands of children, just like they used to.”
Under the proposal parents would be able to use a sum equivalent to the cost of educating their child at a state school to set up new independent schools funded by the Government, which would receive a sum for each pupil they attract.
The policy would seek to increase the number of school places by between 7 and 10 per cent on current levels. New operators might include private companies, charities, community groups and not-for-profit organisations.
Mr Green envisages that it would be tested first by parents with children in smaller urban primary schools but its focus is intended to be inner-city secondary schools.
It would be tested first in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield. Parents appeal against one in every five admissions decisions by inner-city schools compared with one in ten nationally.
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Parents would not be permitted to use the passport to subsidise places at private schools and top up the difference themselves, even though the Conservatives are offering a similar principle in healthcare with their patient’s passport. Private schools would, however, be free to subsidise pupils themselves.
Mr Green said afterwards that it would be wrong to subsidise those parents who could afford private school fees and drew a distinction between education, which was a long-term investment, and a hospital operation which was a one-off emergency.
Iain Duncan Smith first proposed a similar idea during his campaign for the Conservative party leadership during the summer of 2001, drawing on his experience in his constituency of Chingford and Woodford Green.
The proposal is intended to be more radical and wideranging than the assisted places scheme, which subsidised private school education for able children and which Labour cut in 1997.