Stephen Pollard had a thoughtful piece in London's Evening Standard yesterday, and on his own blog. He points out that the ladder which the grammar schools offered to working class children was snatched away for egalitarian reasons. The people in charge decided that schools were for social engineering rather than education.

For the first two thirds of the twentieth century, the high standards of grammar schools acted as a unique springboard, opening up all sorts of areas which had previously been the preserve of the elites, from an Oxbridge degree to a career in the professions.

Then it stopped. It was not true of the final third of that century, and social mobility declined under the Labour government, as it did under its predecessor Tory government.

Where on the social ladder a person was born predicted, with depressing accuracy, where they would end up. The reason? The decline in state education, which coincided with – and was in large part caused by – the shift from selective to comprehensive education.

What happened was that many Socialists saw the grammar schools as enemies in the class struggle. They took talented working-class children and turned them into achievers, making many of them middle class. So the word went out that children were to be educated equally, the gifted alongside the ungifted. Most of the grammar schools were closed or turned into comprehensive schools, and the ladder was taken away. The Labour government, as Pollard points out, still finds the word 'selection' uneasy to live with.

A temporary fix will come when parents can choose any school for their offspring, and new schools can open to meet that demand. But ultimately the state has to get out of the business of running schools; it has proved very bad at it. It can ensure that all children have access to a decent, quality education, but it does not need to set the rules and standards, employ the teachers, or own the schools. As Pollard says, we need to recast the system.

As A-level results are published in the UK's end-of-school examinations, yet another high pass rate has brought yet another barrage of criticism that standards have slid, making them easier to pass and to excel in.

In their report, Standards of Public Examinations in England and Wales, the think tank Reform warns that A-levels have become much easier. They say that a student achieving a grade E in A-level mathematics in 1988 would achieve a grade B now, and that standards of A-levels and GCSEs have steadily fallen since the Department of Education started overseeing them in 1988

The British Chambers of Commerce says the exams have been "dumbed down," and the Confederation of British Industry has highlighted the falling numbers taking languages and sciences. Yet the BBC reports that

The government has defended A-level examinations against claims that it is becoming easier to achieve good grades. Education minister Lord Adonis said improved results were due to a "fundamental shift" in teaching quality and were a "cause for celebration".

You take your choice. Either the exams are less demanding, or teaching is now sufficiently good to get more students through. It is actually quite difficult to determine which is true, although the statistical pattern seems to fit more with systematic grade inflation. Another pointer is the fact that many universities and employers voice criticisms that A-levels are a less reliable indicator of standards than they were.

Geoff Lucas, general secretary of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference, which represents many leading independent schools, said A-levels were in "terminal decline". Grade inflation was making it impossible to distinguish between brighter candidates, he added. Several independent school heads are promoting a move away from A-levels towards the International Baccalaureate, which, they say, has higher academic standards.

As the Mail on Sunday reported, the ASI has held talks with key education figures to examine the case for an independent examination body, and a new exam which would test for quality and hold its value. In fact there was wide support for the idea; so much so that something very similar is already under development, making our own initiative unnecessary.

The Guardian newspaper reports that one of Britain’s teacher unions – the Professional Association of Teachers – says that the single-speed comprehensive school system (under which most pupils in mainland Britain are educated) should be scrapped and replaced with academic selection for all pupils from the age of 11.

Significantly, this comes just a day or two after The Times story that thousands of parents in Northern Ireland appealed to the government to reverse its plans to end academic selection there.

Northern Ireland is proud of its selective (‘grammar’) schools, and boasts a better academic record than the mainland. Last year 69.4% of GCSE results were in the top A*-C range, as opposed to just 59.2% across Britain. At A-Level, 30% of Northern Ireland’s students gained A grades, compared to just 22.4% across Britain.

The question is why politicians are daft enough to maintain the comprehensive system. This one-size-fits-all approach means (as Chris Lambert says in his report Access to Achievement) that schools are not properly tailored to the needs of each student – whether academically gifted or not. Parents don’t like it, for that reason. It has created huge unwieldy, unresponsive schools. And it produces significantly poorer results (not just, I think, in terms of academic performance).

Oh, but silly me, I forgot: it has nothing to do with real outputs of course, and still less to do with what parents actually want. It’s all about the ideological bent of the ‘education experts’ who run the state school monopoly. I doubt that anything parents and teachers say will make much of a dent on that.

You can tell politicians are out of touch whenever they talk about "discipline" in schools. Whenever I hear the word discipline, two thoughts enter my head: the cane and detention. Neither are particularly nice thoughts for parents worrying about whether their child will get on in a school.

I checked out my former school, Dulwich College in south London. Its website has an introduction by the Master who says the school is a "a caring, supportive and well-ordered community which encourages spiritual and personal development where boys from a variety of cultural and social backgrounds can feel secure and equally valued."

To get another perspective, I checked out website of James Alleyn's Girls School which says:

Girls are encouraged to do their best at whatever they attempt, to explore new opportunities and to enjoy every aspect of school life. Our pastoral care provides support and understanding as girls progress through school and meet new challenges. Community Service, partnerships with local state schools and the Duke of Edinburgh Award are all significant contributors to our aim that every girl leaves our school self-confident, imbued with respect and concern for others and eager to make an active contribution to society.

Both schools are private and neither bang on about promoting school discipline. Parents want their children to be happy at school. The idea that children are disciplined the whole time is, frankly, scary.

My suggestion to politicians who want to talk about state education is to get a stack of private school prospectuses and just crib from them.

Alex Singleton is director-general of the Globalisation Institute.

Journalists were quick to note David Cameron’s retreat from the voucher system for schools. Vouchers increase parental involvement by increasing their choices, and it is important that those with a say in education reform should not overlook their political impact and importance.

The policy proposed, and from which David Cameron seems to be retreating, is essentially a clone of the Swedish system, as detailed in this paper by the Research Institute of Industrial Economics in Stockholm.

It is simple to set up a private school. They can be community run, for profit, or charitably. They can, as long as they obey certain basics of the curriculum, teach what they like. They cannot charge top up fees and the municipality must fund it in direct proportion to the number of pupils it attracts. This is what was being proposed, and while allowing top up fees would be even better, Cameron really does seem to have missed the point.

A large part of the political left in the UK, perhaps most of the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties, use things Scandinavian as a template, a design for what would make a better society. Scandinavian is equated with ‘good.’ The Conservatives showed political astuteness by proposing Scandinavian-style vouchers in education.

The principle can be extended to other policy areas. To those who praise the French health system above our own it can be pointed out that it includes private providers and private top up insurance. These things are worth doing for their own sake, of course, because they offer solutions to intractable public sector problems. But it is also useful in politics to confuse and confound one’s enemies, and this seems to be the point which David Cameron might have missed.

(Tim Worstall writes here)

Unnoticed at the recent election, the Conservatives had a schools policy which was almost right. It advocated allowing parents to take the £5,000 per year which the state spends on their child, and spend it at any school which doesn't charge extra fees.

It came pretty close. That 'no top-up' rule will have to go, allowing parents completely free choice of schools, and giving lower-income parents access to better schools. It also needs something dramatic on the supply side to allow new schools to spring up to provide what parents want. Perhaps a regulatory presumption in favour, allowing new schools to be set up and operate without having to climb the paperwork mountain?

Given these two additions to the Conservative policy, many of the school education problems would be solved. Parents would seek out the schools which offered the education they preferred, new ones would be established to do that, and the sink schools would close down. Crucially, it decentralizes education and gives power to parents rather than bureaucrats.

It comes as a surprise to find the Tory shadow spokesman for education, David Cameron MP, backtracking on a policy which finally promises success. According to George Jones, the Telegraph's political editor,

Mr Cameron told the Conservative national education society in London that the Tories were in danger of "missing the big point" in education by talking more about "structures" and giving parents greater choices between different sorts of schools… Mr Cameron said Tories should focus on simple and straightforward issues. "Discipline. Standards. Promoting teaching methods that work. Scrapping those that don't. Building on tests, league tables and exam standards that genuinely measure success, failure and progress.

But parental input is the big point. It is what will enable failure to be weeded out and success emulated. To attempt to impose improvement from the centre first of all imposes one set of ideas about what that constitutes, and secondly it re-treads the familiar road of trying to force improvements through layers of self-interested bureaucracy and teachers’ unions. That is what doesn’t work, and it is why it must by bypassed by parental choice.

It is rather depressing to see a shadow minister who seems to think the will-power to impose sound ideas is what makes success. We've been there.

Tory leader Michael Howard asked a rhetorical question of Prime Minister Tony Blair at Parliamentary Question Time. Given the importance of school discipline, he asked, shouldn't headteachers be given full authority?

At present, when a violent or disruptive pupil is removed by a headteacher, there are avenues of appeal to local authority tribunals and even to the law courts. These bodies lack detailed knowledge of what goes on in a school, or of how discipline and morale work. Often the parents in the case back the errant child rather than the teachers. Sometimes the appeal is upheld and the guilty party cocks a snook at authority.

It seems obvious that a body's authority is diminished when another appeal body is placed above it with power to reverse its decisions. When a headteacher's ruling can be overturned, his or her authority is weakened, and the code of discipline and chain of command within a school is disrupted.

A similar effect has taken place in British law. The addition of a European Court with powers to overturn the decisions of British courts has undermined their authority, and therefore their status. Once the Law Lords had the final say; now they are subject to rulings from Europe.

Britain's decision to place itself under the European Court of Human Rights had a similar effect. Lawbreakers who are dealt with by every process of UK law can now have their sentences overturned by alleging that their human rights were violated.

In a litigious culture, we may reach the stage where every punishment meted out by a classroom teacher or a parade-ground sergeant can be appealed all the way up to the United Nations. The alternative might be to reinforce authority within some activities by restricting the right to appeal beyond them. Schools might be an obvious candidate.

The Times' education editor Tony Halpin tells how Prof David Jesson (York) has tracked the progress of 28,000 children who scored highest in English and Maths at age 11 (about the top 5 percent). About 11,800 went on to selective grammar schools or high achievement comprehensives, and 16,500 went on to lower quality schools.

Professor Jesson found that success rates declined in line with the numbers of bright children in a school, and dipped sharply when there were fewer than five. Where 20 pupils from the most able 5 per cent were clustered together in a year group, each achieved an average of nearly seven GCSE passes at A* and A grade last year. But where there was just one child from this group in a school, he or she passed fewer than four GCSEs at these grades.

This backs up the intuitive view that bright children encourage each other. At grammar schools competition and co-operation sit happily together. Children try to out-score each other, but often help their friends with homework and discus their work with their rivals. If our concern is to bring out the potential in every child, putting bright children to spur each other on seems an obvious way to set about it.

But there are those who argue that selective schools 'cream off' the talented children, leaving other schools without their beneficial effect. This outlook seems to treat bright children as some kind of scarce national resource to be shared out equally and fairly, without regard to what it does to their own development. It might even be counter-productive, not only holding back the bright ones, but making the other children aware of their academic shortcomings, when they might otherwise have happily applied themselves to more vocational skills.

The study suggests that academic work is like sport, in that its participants achieve more when alongside a high-achieving peer group. If we want the best and brightest to benefit themselves and their communities, we should put them together.

The Labour party still look too much at production factors in schooling. They talk of smaller class sizes, improved physical facilities, and injection of private capital and management into city academies. The Conservative policy will allow parents to spend 5000 pound vouchers at private schools, provided no top-up fees are charged. Neither of them is wrong, but neither addresses the central problem of UK school education: there are simply not enough good school places.

Quality state schools, including grammar and selective schools, are heavily over-subscribed. Determined middle class parents move into their catchment areas, and some lie about their child’s address. Many private schools are over-subscribed, too, with their high price indicating an excess of demand over supply. The only places over-supplied are in low quality comprehensive schools with dismal educational records.

We need more good quality schools. Successful policy should allow and encourage new schools to start up, minimizing the regulatory obstacles and ending local authority obstruction. Groups of parents, teachers and businessmen should be able to start new schools rapidly, concentrating on good teaching and correct attitudes. Instead of attending in minute detail to the inputs, there should be a presumption in favour of new schools, with emphasis on their output.

It took a civil servant to think up the 'surplus places' rule. It prevented new schools in areas where there were unfilled places in existing schools, which is roughly equivalent to banning a new restaurant when there are empty tables at worthless ones in the same area. It will be easier to improve education by setting up good new schools than by trying to upgrade sink schools with all their culture and history.

We need to see many new good schools as quickly as possible, and bad schools closed down. We need to see new types of school, and new experiments in education methods. The more good practice there is, the more examples there will be to copy. And the more good school places there are for parents to spend their vouchers on, the more meaningful will be the choice they have. The policy which works will be one which results in large numbers of quality school places being created as rapidly as possible.

Many of Britain’s universities are giving in without a fight, reports Tony Halpin, Education Editor of the Times. They are discriminating in favour of state school applicants with lower qualifications, in return for being able to charge higher annual fees.

Despite ministers’ assurances that top-up fees would not affect admissions, vice-chancellors have told the official regulator that they would take more state pupils as long as they could charge maximum fees. The move was attacked last night by senior academics for making social engineering part of the admissions process rather than pure academic merit.

It is apparently not enough to achieve the required grades for university admission. You now have to come from the approved socio-economic class. Some analysts have expressed the view that selection on grounds other than merit will lower the standards and international standing of UK universities and their graduates. They find it disturbing that universities are not doing this out of conviction, but simply to obtain government permission to augment their budgets.

More to the point, it lets state schools off the hook. If their students gain university admissions without qualifying on merit, the pressure to improve is lowered. Many educators think that the UK should be improving its state schools so that their students qualify for university on their ability. If the requirement is lowered, so will be the quality of education they receive.

A recent study by the Manhattan Institute shows that school vouchers, now available to needy families of various kinds in Florida, do not just help those who get them - but improve education for those who don't as well.

As I learnt at the Heritage Foundation Resource Bank meeting in Miami last week, the Manhattan Institute shows that the performance of government-run schools increases when vouchers are introduced - or indeed, even just threatened. The same phenomenon has been noted with the municipal schools in Sweden, which also has a voucher-style education choice system. The supposed problem of: "What about those left behind?" just isn't a problem at all.

Manhattan also looked in detail at one of the Florida voucher plans, the McKay plan, a generous voucher arrangement to help disabled and special-needs kids access the education services they need in the private sector. The more disability they have, the bigger is the voucher.

Parents of these kids often had a hard time getting the services they need in the public sector. Theoretically a service plan would be drawn up for each disabled or special-needs child: but if those services are not adequately delivered, there is little parents can do about it. Only 30% in this traditional system say they have got the services they need.

But the Manhattan work shows that 80% of parents say they get all the services they need when they can shop around using the voucher. And they are pleased that class sizes have fallen, from 25 in the traditional system to just 12 in voucher arrangements, and that bullying is down too. All in all, some 90% of those in the voucher plan say they are happy with the system - compared with just 40% who are happy with the traditional system.

At the Heritage Foundation Resource Bank meeting in Miami last Friday, Patricia Levesque, the deputy chief of staff in Jeb Bush's office, described Florida's voucher and school choice plans. There are now voucher plans for disadvantaged families, for students with disabilities or special needs, for children of military families, and even a fund financed by companies (helped by a tax credit) to fund private education for 11,000 needy students.

Though activists are still challenging vouchers in the courts, "we have moved beyond the choice debate," said Levesque. School choice is now accepted, and people can see the benefits it brings - to poorer families in particular. "The big debate now is how much state accountability should remain, in terms of the curriculum, management decisions, and so on."

Let's hope the answer is: not much. As Governor Bush says, schools should be accountable to parents, not bureaucrats. Provided they demonstrate fiscal probity and their students are properly protected, schools should be left alone. There are those who hold that state education should be left unimproved, until some magic day when it will simply disappear. Parents and students in recept of vouchers are not amongst them.

Professor Tim Brighouse has spent a life in state education. He's London Schools Commissioner, a top adviser to government. No rabid right-winger he. And yet, just recently, he has been reported as arguing that parents of children who do badly at primary school should get a £500 voucher to spend on private tuition.

England and Wales already spends £2bn of its £24bn schools budget trying to tackle the educational needs of poor families. Professor Brighouse wants this to be increased: but of the extra cash he proposes, £500 would go direct to parents to spend privately, a deliberate move to encourage them to take a real interest in their child's education. (And less obviously, perhaps, an admission that the state system is unable to deal with these problems.) As he put it:

The involvement of the hardest-to-reach parents and carers in the form of an 'education extra' voucher would surely help to support the aims of the school and society as a whole not to allow the cycle of deprivation to repeat itself.

That is indeed the problem of state education. But now, it seems, the voucher principle is being accepted at the very top of this crumbling edifice. Sure, £500 to spend as parents choose is not much out of the cost of state education. But it's a start. Now we've all accepted the principle, let's begin talking about how extensive the voucher ought to be.

New research by the London Institute of Education suggests that more than one pupil in four receives private tuition at some stage in his or her career, reports John Clare, Education Editor of the Telegraph.

When Tony and Cherie Blair sent their state-educated sons to be privately tutored, they were not so much setting a trend as climbing on a rapidly accelerating bandwagon.

Despite the availability of free state education, people are spending £50m a year on private tuition, and the market is growing. The reason is not only a natural desire of parents to give their children a good start. It is, according to some, a move born out of despair. Bill Fleming, founder of Top Tutors, puts it succinctly.

"Poor teaching, high staff turnover, too many temporary teachers, disruption in class - there are loads of reasons why state school parents come to us," he says. "Their children can't keep up, the curriculum has not been covered and so on."

Many parents must be grateful that there is a remedy to hand for the deficiencies of state education. But a possible reason for the success of private tuition is that it barely registers. When Labour politicians send their children to a private school there is the usual outcry; but private tutors don't count. They can be hired discreetly, without the P-word being mentioned.

Parents in general might wish that state schools did the job anyway, but they have seen years of campaigning and oceans of cash leave standards still far below acceptable levels. Private tuition gives them a solution. It cuts through the Gordian knot and gives them a way of raising the achievement level of their own children. It's a pity the state school system leads them no other recourse, but they prefer their children better educated than it seems able to manage.

Scotland's government may have to shell out £35m in compensation to English students who have been charged £1,750 more than Scots for exactly the same courses Scottish universities.

When Tony Blair - looking down a funding black hole - decided to introduce 'top up' fees for England's state-run universities, the Scots rejected the idea. Scottish students pay only a £2000 endowment after they graduate; but English students pay £1,250 for each of 3 years - in advance.

And now Holyrood wants to charge English students up to £15,000 for medical degrees. Not surprisingly, students complain this is discriminatory.

The whole thing shows what a mess you get into when the political system runs education. Independent universities would be free to charge students whatever they felt right, based on the demand for their product. But today, it is the politicians who set the price. Not surprisingly, they try to set it sufficiently low that students and parents don't get too annoyed. So the universities remain starved of cash and the best teachers start moving abroad. Then they start charging foreign students more in an effort to balance the books. But when one part of the United Kingdom starts regarding students from another part as foreigners, you know the whole thing is daft.

It is revealed in several newspapers today that the London School of Economics has been operating a secret quota system to favour the admission of state-educated students. It has been doing this, no doubt, because of the pressure from the government.

The news will increase the perception of those who pay a great deal to sent their children to private schools that they are being discriminated against. This may add to the various factors tending towards a possible re-structuriong of university education over the next ten or twenty years. Britain may develop some private, fee-paying universities. Other factors pushing in this direction are:

• The top universities including Oxford, Cambridge and the London School of Economics believe that the money they receive as part of state education is inadequate for them to cling onto their already doubtful ranking as world class. They are already flirting with the idea of 'going private'.

• Some universities, especially the London School of Economics, receive a substantial income already from foreign students. For them, it would not be such a major break to 'go private'.

• Students (or their parents) are now subject to top-up fees even when they stay in the state system. So the difference between the cost of going private and staying with the state is less than previously

• Gradually parents are learning from their children just how inferior state-funded university education in Britain is becoming. They hear how little contact the students have with teaching staff, how few essays they are set to write and, in effect, how much time is being wasted.

• Some parents also fear that universities, in one sense, actually damage the life chances of their children by instilling them with anti-business, neo-Socialist attitudes.

Already there is a trend for parents to send their children to American universities, at considerable expense. This trend is likely to continue unless some British universities go private.

James Bartholomew is author of The Welfare State We're In. Read the blog of the book here.

I was being taken around a preparatory school in London and the head noted that a computer screen had been moved in one classroom. "Yes," explained the teacher. I put it in the front last week when we were being inspected. Now the inspectors have gone, I have returned it to the back."

It is a rather humiliating when independent schools feel they have to hide away the methods of teaching they really believe in because of government diktat. In this case, the teacher felt he had to pretend to believe in the "computers everywhere" idea that was, above all else, an attempt by Tony Blair - a politician, not an educator - to sound modern in 1997.

James Bartholomew is author of The Welfare State We're In. Read the blog of the book here.

Our friend Sir Douglas Hague - Associate Fellow of Templeton College, Oxford - has recently compiled 30 case studies in entrepreneurship. They include 18 high-tech companies spun out from Oxford University since the 1960s. The aim is to give other academic innovators an insight into how to turn their ideas into effective spin-off businesses.

The case studies are up on the Oxford Science Enterprise Centre (OxSEC) website and give an interesting insight into university entrepreneurship in the UK. If only we could make such enterprising stuff the norm in academe, rather than the exception! Then perhaps the universities could start to break free from their dependence on the state!

Britain's Education Secretary recently unveiled plans for new vocational courses for teenagers who were not academic enough for A-levels. Making the school leaving age, as she put it 'effectively 18'.

Why? You don't have to stay in school to be successful. Ask entrepreneurs Sir Richard Branson (of Virgin), Bernie Ecclestone (of Formula One), Philip Green (of BHS and Top Shop) or Sir Alan Sugar (of Amstrad), who left school at 16. Or 007-actor Pierce Brosnan, TV cook Delia Smith, and music star Alicia Keys. Even Whitbread poetry winner Don Paterson.

Imprisoning kids in state-run schools until they reach 18 is a bad idea. Many will find it completely pointless and will disrupt the learning of others. Others, being cocooned too long in a protected environment, will lose the drive and energy that could make them great.

Better to put the leaving age back to 14, but have a leaving exam so we could be confident that leavers actually had the basic skills they needed for living. Lots of kids who know that state education is failing them would be studying round the clock just to make sure they could get out!

A couple of years ago I attended a conference in Iceland at which various speakers from different countries talked about the enormous potential unleashed if you bring choice and diversity into the provision of education - unlike America and Britain, for example, where schools are almost all run by the government.

One of the most heartening experiences was that from Sweden, described by my friend Mikael Sandstrom of the Swedish Moderate Party. Long a socialist paradise, Sweden a few years back realized it just couldn't pay its way, nor deal with the enormous demand for state-subsidized services, so set about a programme of (piecemeal) reform. In 2001, for example, a new law allowed people - corporations, non-profit groups, charities and others - to start their own schools if they thought the local municipal schools were not serving parents.

Back in my Reykjavik conference, we were all amazed to learn that some 270 new non-state schools had been created under this legislation. That is nothing, it seems. Yesterday, at a seminar in Edinburgh, Mikael told me that there were now more than 1000 independent schools. Quite a growth. But it shows the depth of parental demand for better education.

Indeed, after initial scepticism, some 90% of parents now say they support school choice. About 52% of the new schools are non-profit arrangments (often started by parents and teachers), and 15% are charitable. But there are companies too which are developing distinctive 'brands' and working methods across many schools. Vittra now has 25, for example, and Kunskapsskolan 20.

It seems a simple way to get real choice and innovation into education: just stand back and let people do it!

Education at Britain's state-run universities (that's basically all of them) used to be free. Indeed, the state gave you a 'maintenance grant' to pay your living expenses. To many, it was a three-year holiday, paid for by the state, and the universities found them queuing up for it. But taxpayers' pockets are not so deep, and a few years ago the maintenance grant was replaced by a student loan system. But the courses themselves remained free to UK students.

Whereupon - this isn't rocket science, is it? - the universities started recruiting more and more students from overseas, because only they could be charged the full cost of the courses they took.

But still the books didn't balance, so the Blair government said it would allow universities to charge fees. Not at market rates, of course: that would be unfair. Just up to a maximum of £3,000 a year. Whereupon - obvious, again - most did indeed set fees at this maximum figure.

Even so, they are overstrained. Cambridge University says that charging students £3,000 a year will not safeguard its future. Its annual accounts published this week show that the university is nearly £17 million in the red, with teaching and research losing £15 million.

The solution? As long as the universities are in thrall to government, they will never be free from political interference and will never be allowed to charge what their product is worth. It's really time for a velvet divorce from the state. Charge the market rate, build up capital endowments to help poor but able students, and serve your students: not the politicians.

The Department for Education has issued new league tables to measure schools' achievement. They show that performance is up, especially at state schools. The news is not all good, however, because the validity of the new tables has been questioned. Controversially they include a range of vocational subjects not previously counted. The Independent Schools Council points out that certificates in cake decoration or pattern cutting and wired sugar flowers are deemed equivalent to GCSEs in English, mathematics and science. A distinction in cake decoration was worth more than an A grade in GCSE physics under the "absurd" system, it said.

The tables for 2004 have gone so far in the direction of including every possible qualification that they no longer have any value whatever in reporting on meaningful achievement in key academic subjects or serious vocational studies…Not only can these tables not be compared with any previous published data about schools; they no longer tell parents anything valuable about the quality of a school's academic or vocational programme. This is not even a case of trying to compare apples and pears: it is comparing apples with candy floss.

(The Level 2 certificate in cake decoration, offered by the Awarding Body Consortium (ABC), requires students to "demonstrate skills in coating cakes of various shapes," know how to make sugar paste, and to prepare simple marzipan figures).

Stephen Twigg, the School Standards Minister, dismissed the criticism as "old-fashioned educational snobbery," saying that the move reflected that "the world has moved on."

The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority has also stirred controversy by downgrading the relative worth of high GCSE passes, and by its decree that an intermediate level GNVQ in computing is "equivalent" to four GCSEs at grades A* to C. It all heightens suspicions that the public sector tends to pursue the targets themselves rather than any reality they are supposed to measure.

What is needed is outside evaluation. We prefer external assessment of a company’s credit worthiness rather than its own evaluation. Similarly, we could put more trust if outside bodies set the standards for school performance and measured their achievement. When the state measures its own performance, we have less confidence in its objectivity, or in the validity of its results.

(Full story in Telegraph and Times)

It has not been a good week for state education in Britain. First came a study from London University’s Institute of Education (reported by dehavilland and the UK press). It explored whether smaller class sizes do indeed produce better results. Smaller classes formed a key Labour pledge when it was first elected. While doubts have been raised about older children (11+) level, it had been widely assumed that smaller classes at primary level (5+) gave better results. The report says:

No evidence was found that children in smaller classes made more progress in mathematics, English or science.

Indeed, a counter-indicator emerged, in that levels of literacy among children aged 11 in classes of fewer than 25 pupils were lower than those who were in groups of more than 30 children.

In fact family poverty, rather than class size, had the biggest effect on results. Those eligible for free school meals (taken to be a social indicator) fell further behind in English and maths as they progressed through school.

Now the Commons Education and Skills Select Committee has said there is no evidence to support the claim that more money in education equals better results. The Labour-dominated committee says bluntly that the Government is wrong to claim that billions of pounds in extra funding for schools has produced better examination results.

Despite Chancellor Gordon Brown’s claims to the contrary, the committee said that GCSE exam results had improved no more rapidly during Tony Blair’s Government than when the Conservatives were in power, even though public expenditure on secondary schools had risen up to ten times faster.

The Government needs to take great care in making claims about the effectiveness of increased investment in education in increasing levels of achievement which the evidence cannot be proved to support. Links between expenditure and outcome remain difficult to establish.

The select committee’s report on public expenditure in education said that the Treasury had “simply asserted” a direct link between spending and exam performance in the 2004 Budget, with no supporting evidence. These two reports do not, of course, prove any case, but they do suggest that the link between extra money and better results might be more tenuous than the UK government, and especially its Chancellor, has assumed. It could be that the mountain of additional spending might bring forth only a mouse of achievement.

We sometimes get asked which universities have libertarian student groups. Like many student societies, such groups often run for a year or two until the leading lights graduate, but there are some that go from strength to strength. Here we feature the three most prolific.

The LSE Hayek Society, founded in 1996, runs regular events and publishes an academic journal, and is run by Nick Spurrell. It is named after Friedrich Hayek (1899 - 1992) who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1974. The Hayek Society is one of the most popular societies at the LSE.

The University of St Andrews Liberty Club was founded in 2001 to defend classical liberalism, libertarianism and free-market economics. It has held many prestigious events with people like: Bill Emmott (Editor of The Economist), Sir Samuel Brittan (Financial Times), Lord Lamont (former Chancellor of the Exchequer) and Matthew Paris (The Times). The president is Christopher Berry.

Oxford University's Hayek Society recently had the famous anarcho-capitalist David Friedman as a speaker (yes, he's the son of the Nobel Laureate, Milton Friedman). The LSE's Dr Razeen Sally, noted authority on trade economics, also spoke recently.

The Coalition of Higher Education Students in Scotland (CHESS) was set up three years ago to supposedly represent the interests of Scottish students. It is predominantly formed of the Scottish student unions independent of the National Union of Students.

Supporters of the National Union of Students claim that CHESS is worthless. They say that "CHESS has failed to make a significant impact on the educational landscape", although in some deluded way seem to think that the NUS has been a success. Well, the fact is that both organizations have failed. They both failed to convince anyone - other than the Tories - that universities should be free. The fact is that everyone would like a free lunch. But in the real world there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. The government's policy on university fees is good for students, good for universities and good for the country. Deep down, even the Tories know that. The arguments put forward by both CHESS and the NUS are unconvincing to say the least.

Student union membership is effectively compulsory because of the privileged position union buildings are given in student life. Perhaps, therefore, it is wrong that student unions themselves join CHESS or the NUS. Perhaps students should be given the choice individually about whether to join these organizations. This might not lead these organizations to represent many students. But given most Scottish students have never even heard of CHESS, and given the failure of the NUS, who cares?

Quite often in Westminster circles people discuss the question of how many people should go to university. Should it be 5% of the population, 20%, 50% or 100%? There is a tendency among conservatives to say that too many people go to university.

I find the discussion pretty academic because it seems to me that governments should not set a target for university attendance. Instead, we should leave the percentage going to university up to the market. Let's leave individuals to make rational choices about whether to go or not, based on whether they think the cost is worth it. The Labour government is quite right to have introduced tuition fees, and the Tories have been frankly shameful in opposing the government's Thatcherist policies on this. If students have to pay the full economic cost of university tuition - in the form of loans they pay off when affluent - they make better choices than if the state just signs blank cheques. Instead, the Tories think they know better than the market how many people should go to uni. They don't.

Truancy is a much neglected topic in the sociology of knowledge. It is mistakenly treated as irrational, even criminal. It is correctly linked with children's learning deficits. These usually arise, however, not from home, but from faulty curriculum and pedagogy.

People think truants hate school. They rarely do, though they often dislike particular subjects and certain sarcastic or rude teachers. My research in Britain and Bruce Cooper's in the US have revealed the huge scale of the phenomenon. In some secondary schools half the children truant regularly.

The American and British establishments blatantly gloss over the problem, along with all those educational difficulties originating in the school itself, echoing the way the old Communists concealed the truth about Communism. The American elite are even more defensive than their British counterparts. This is a disastrous mistake.

Truancy data constitute incomparably rich policy material. We already know that semi-literates truant because they cannot do the work, and that clever children do so because they find the work derisory. We know that a large minority hates games and PE. We know foreign languages are very badly done in both countries. We know that wrong methods of teaching reading have been practiced for 150 years in America, and in Britain for almost a century.

In both countries mathematics teaching is appalling. In both systems political correctness has raged through the curriculum, destroying the authority of the teachers. These indefensible school practices cause truancy and do, indeed, compound the effects of bad homes. Were it not for these poor practices, schools might combat unsatisfactory home life. Sad to say, huge vested interests stand in the way of the requisite reforms. And the related questions of compulsory education and home schooling have not even been brought into the truancy debate.

Dennis O'Keeffe is Professor of Education at the University of Buckingham.

Britain's Conservatives have got themselves into a right stew over higher education. Not content with making university places free, now they propose to actually pay students to take unpopular courses like chemistry, physics, and modern languages. Barmy.

Going to university should be a market choice, just like any other. The state doesn't run a chain of supermarkets offering free food to all comers. And it certainly doesn't pay people to walk out with the kinds of food that most people don't care for. Food is no less essential than education - so why the difference in policy?

The answer is that we are distorting, disastrously, the entire education sector in the name of access. The fear is that students from less wealthy backgrounds would not be able to pay university fees: that would be unfair, and the country would lose good talent.

But instead, we should be subsidizing the people who need help, not ruining the market. Universities should charge whatever they like for academic courses. Some universities and some courses would be in worldwide demand, and would be expensive. Others may be less in demand, and would be cheaper. But students could make a rational decision - perhaps they believe they would have more fun, derive more intellectual value, or improve their work prospects more, by choosing an expensive course. It's really up to them. And not much different from the same young people taking out a mortgage on a more expensive home because it is nearer where the jobs are than some cheaper place out in the sticks.

That will give us a competitive world-class university system. If the state has a role, it is to give help to deserving students who can't afford to buy access. But ideally, the universities themselves should build up scholarship funds for that purpose. So that's ideal: a solid higher-education sector, students making rational decisions about investing in themselves, nobody left behind. The Tories know they are wrong. Why can't they admit it?

Students at the University of Edinburgh are to vote on whether to affiliate to the National Union of Students.

A yes vote by Edinburgh would mean the university's bars would switch to buying from the National Union of Students Services Limited (NUSSL). The independent unions fear that the loss could lead their own buying consortium, Northern Services, to collapse, which could suck them into the NUS too. The independents also dislike the anti-competitive nature of NUSSL which bans unions from buying from other suppliers. This prevents unions from getting many regional drinks and talking advantage of special offers from other companies.

An Edinburgh vote to affiliate could lead to a wave of defections to the NUS. But a resounding no vote would be a further humiliation for the NUS. Three years ago, students at the University of St Andrews voted against joining by a huge margin. 1013 students voted against, only 63 for. This time, it is believed that the NUS will to go to any length to win including busing in hundreds of English students to campaign, knowing that the NUS's reputation depends on a victory.

Meanwhile, students at the University of St Andrews are increasingly frustrated by the arrogance of the NUS. One student said: "Every time there's a Prince William story in the news, the NUS is on the phone giving quotes to newspapers. But St Andrews isn't part of the NUS. They should mind their own business."

Tristram Jones-Parry is taking early retirement from his current role as Headmaster of Westminster School, one of the top schools in the country, where he is regarded highly. He was formerly Headmaster of Emanuel School, another excellent London private school. He has also taught at Dulwich College. He would now like to help out the state sector by moving there to teach maths (which he has been teaching for decades). One might think that the opportunity to get someone of Mr Jones-Parry's stature into the state sector would be jumped at. After all, there is a shortage of maths teachers. Unfortunately, he has been told that he is not properly qualified to work at a state school. I am sure that it is something that the Department for Education and Skills will be embarassed about, but why do we let the DfES set such rules in the first place? If the best private schools can employ someone without an official teacher qualification, why can't the state sector?

If the government had asked me to devise a programme to promote literacy by getting children to read, I suppose I might have come up with some practical ideas. They do ask all kinds of stuff. I might have worked out a system of incentives and prizes, perhaps accompanied by an advertising campaign which made it clear that not only was reading good for success in later life, it was also pretty cool and a heap of fun, too. Costing a few hundred million pounds, it would not have been among the more expensive public projects. The Millennium Dome cost far more.

One thing I would never have thought of was the idea of getting a single mother in Edinburgh to write stories about a private school reached by invisible steam trains, where mail was delivered by owls, and where the national curriculum was replaced by lessons in various sorts of magic. Yet the Harry Potter books got children reading. They queued up outside the bookshops on the eve of publication of each new story. They disappeared into bedrooms to read them through so they would be able to join in conversations at school. They went on to read other children’s books. Reading became cool.

This cost a few million pounds, none of it public money. The author, J K Rowling, is today worth more than $1bn, but the phenomenon was in full flood by the time she had made the first few million pounds. To get children reading, the Harry Potter books provided a far more elegant solution than any amount of head-scratching and midnight oil might have produced. Reality often turns out stranger than anything we can dream up.

A girl from Haberdasher's (private) school is accepted at Exeter University if she gains three As in her A-level exams. A state school pupil for the identical course requires only an A and two Bs. This discrimination has spread to several universities, and the government is strong-arming the rest into doing it. What is going on?

The reasoning is that it is harder to gain three As at a state school. It is indeed. It's not a problem at the best state schools, many of which are grammar or selective schools. The problem is that the overall quality of state schools is not good enough.

Lowering the standards is one way of concealing the failure of the state system. It is akin to hiding the symptoms in a patient rather than tackling the illness. Measures to improve the quality of state education would be a more appropriate response than measures to conceal it.

The Conservative Party is looking hard at the Swedish school system, in which parents are free to choose a private school, and transfer their state funding to it. It is effectively a voucher system, though parents cannot add to it at more expensive schools. The private schools created in response to it now educate 6% of Sweden's children.

Some education reformers suggest that Britain should be fostering low-cost private schools as an alternative to the very expensive private sector and the sometimes very poor state sector. A Swedish-style voucher might do just that. Given the dissatisfaction with UK state education, the chances are that the new type of private schools would soon far exceed their numbers in Sweden.

The problem is not to hide the underachievement of state education, but to bring it up to a standard where no discrimination is needed.

A dilemma for some holding centre-left views is that they believe in the principle of state education for all, but feel an obligation to their children to send them to the best school possible. Some conclude that sending their children privately would not happen in an ideal world ("if only the government delivered on its promise of a first class education system") but that here and now they have to go private.

Others choose to send their children to state schools, some of them rather sanctimoniously telling anyone who will listen about how they made a sacrifice in order to stand up for their principles.

Of course, these wealthy middle-class leftists who send their children to state schools do not send them to failing schools. They send them to the very best ones. The consequence is that they take up places that would have otherwise been taken by less well off children. By refusing to go private, they make other children have a worse education. Of course, they have paid for state education through their taxes, so they have a legitimate claim to it. But all the sanctimony about promoting the greater good is a bit much.

In an attempt not to make any child feel like a failure, proponents of progressive education attacked competitive sports. Their ideas are more than adequately described by this quotation from Lewis Carrol's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland:

There was no 'One, two, three, and away,' but they began running when they liked, and left off when they liked, so that it was not easy to know when the race was over. However, when they had been running half an hour or so, and were quite dry again, the Dodo suddenly called out 'The race is over!' and they all crowded round it, panting, and asking, 'But who has won?'

This question the Dodo could not answer without a great deal of thought, and it sat for a long time with one finger pressed upon its forehead (the position in which you usually see Shakespeare, in the pictures of him), while the rest waited in silence. At last the Dodo said, 'EVERYBODY has won, and all must have prizes.'

Fortunately, it is reported that competitive sports are now going to be encouraged within state schools.

The increase in competitive sports will not only promote the desire to win and relegate the term 'second' into being a fancy word for 'loser' but will also promote a healthier lifestyle, hopefully reducing childhood obesity.

In addition if we do end up hosting the 2012 Olympics we may have encouraged talented young athletes into competing rather than just taking part.

One of the more implausible arguments used against school choice is that it would increase inequality. Greater choice probably won't do much to improve a really top-notch school like Dulwich College. Where its real effect will be is to push up the quality of education provided to those currently getting a poor education. It will enable parents to group together and take their children away from failing schools and set up a new ones. It will make failing schools improve or go out of business. The current education system - even if you take out the private sector - is unequal. Even if you just look at state comprehensive schools, there's a huge deal of inequality. If you care about equality, you should support school choice.

Socialism is a fraud. It claims to be about promoting equality, but it instead delivers inequality, misery and failure. To echo Milton Friedman, an education system that puts equality before choice will end up with neither. But a system that puts choice before equality will end up with a good measure of both.

"I'm from the Department of Education and Skills and I'm here to help," is the mentality of the staff across the road from the Adam Smith Institute in the DFES building. Their intention - of making Britain's education system work better - is a noble one. Unfortunately, they are the root problem of our education system.

I was on the BBC recently debating a spokesman from the Socialist Workers' Party who was also a teacher. He argued that workers should stand up for themselves by striking more. He said that teachers could not be expected to simply change jobs by moving to another school because all schools have the same bureaucratic structures, the same annoyances, and the same red tape. I suggested that maybe some of that was down to having a system of education centrally controlled by officials in London.

The fact is that choice in education will not only help those pupils currently dumped into sink schools, it will also be good for teachers. By taking decisions currently made by the DFES (and Local Education Authorities), and putting them instead in the hands of headteachers, there will be greater diversity in how schools work. This will give teachers more options when choosing which sort of school to work in. Ending the Department of Education and Skills is in the interests of teachers and pupils alike.

One of the arguments often made against greater patient and parental choice is that people are not capable of making choices on these issues. People are too stupid or too ignorant to make such choices. Or they don't care. As a result, we should leave it to others to make these choices for us.

Of course, there are those who can't be expected to make choices - someone suffering from a mental disability isn't necessarily able to decide on their treatment. The parent who will never care about their children might not care where their children go to school. But the point about choice in public services is that everyone benefits - even if not everyone is thinking about the choices on offer. Even though a parent might not care how well their children get educated (and let's face it, this is really a very small minority), because others do care, the bad schools will have to improve standards - or go bust.

Now let's take the charge that people are too ignorant to make choices. No one is suggesting that people should have to make choices in a vacuum. When you go and see your GP, they already make recommendations which treatments are available. Newspapers would publish guides to where is best to get treatment. There would be a range of measures and guides produced by organisations to help people make decisions.

The current attempts to improve public services through increased spending have delivered disappointing results. Greater choice has been tried and worked in many European countries, so why does the Left keep on opposing it here?

This week's Computing newspaper reports that the government is to replace whiteboards in UK classrooms with interactive, computer-powered whiteboards.

The government has a new initiative where, once again, they are dictating to all schools across the country how increases in education spending must be used. If schools themselves could choose how to spend the money, they might make other choices. They might install such whiteboards in classrooms used for certain subjects but not in others. They might spend the money instead on repairs to school buildings or on new teachers.

Although this new spending on state education may seem a good idea, the government once again assumes it knows better than headteachers. Why do we bother employing headteachers if the Department for Education and Skills can't be trusted to let them do their jobs?

Britain's parliamentary Education Committee whines about the "evils" of selection. But in the US, there are no such doubts. This Education Department website lists the benefits of the many "Charter Schools" - independently run but publicly funded.

The fact that students are never assigned to a charter school, but are there as a conscious choice, helps create a voluntary civic community... the tremendous commitment on the part of the teachers, parents, community members, administrators, and students is palpable.

And selection doesn't mean academic selection. It means parents being able to choose a school that is right for their child. In many Charter Schools, the mission is to prepare low-income, urban students... students who enrol with below-grade skills but who aspire - and get to - college. Others reject the traditional academic agenda and "strive to educate the whole person, mind, body and will for peace, justice, freedom, compassion, wholeness and fullness of life."

"The way we are going about closing the achievement gap for our kids," says Roxbury Prep's principal on the site, "simply would not be possible under the present confines of the public school system."

Visits to classrooms in these charter schools found students engaged, on task, and learning. A strong, clearly articulated purpose focuses the work, creates a pervasive positive spirit, and promotes consistent expectations from class to class.

At each of these schools, the culture forged around a shared educational vision creates a strong sense of community. Parents choose to send their children, and students know why they are there.

Britain's Chancellor Gordon Brown announced "more cash for science and research" in his spending plans last week. But should universities applaud this apparent new largesse for science, which comes to them via the DTI?

The money won't go only to science nor to the best research. Universities UK demands research funding is spent evenly by region, university and subject matter. Favouring productive research units is unfair, apparently.

Brown is only giving with his left hand what his right is taking away from universities through other channels. If he cannot get his hands to meet, why should universities applaud? He is micro-managing how universities spend their money and building a huge and wasteful research bureaucracy in the process.

Where is the analysis of taxpayer value in research and university funding? The government's research funding process gives poor returns for taxpayers, and would be better if it rewarded those universities that specialize in what they are good at.

Last Thursday evening I was in Jermyn Street, home of many of London’s shirtmakers. Some of the retailers – like Charles Twywritt, Thomas Pink and T. M. Lewin – had late night opening, and they are the ones aiming at a fairly young clientele. Meanwhile, the retailers with an older audience in mind had already closed. I'm not sure why the divide occurs. Maybe older shoppers have to get back to their families in the evening.

In markets, individual retailers adapt to market demand. Quality is driven up because of competition. In the state sector, market demand is poorly listened to. Instead politicians and bureaucrats create the likes of the Department for Education and Skills, the National Curriculum and the National Grid for Learning, as though they know best. Good schools are prevented from expanding, parents wanting to set up new schools are hindered, and children have to go to failing schools.

If the government ran shirt-making, we'd have nationally-approved shirt designs. Much of the debate would be between those demanding that shirt-makers produce more casual button-down collars, and those demanding more winged collars and compulsory cufflinks. Thank goodness we have a market.

Ah, you say, education is not like shirt-making. Then again, countries like Sweden which have given the market a much bigger role are reaping the benefits. If Sweden can introduce market reforms to its schools, why can't we? And since schools are more important than shirts, isn't it all the more important that we should apply sound economics to education?

Today, local government eats up to a third of Britain's state education budget and tells head teachers how to spend the rest. But now the (Labour!) government may be planning to get local authorities out of education, handing money direct to schools, and letting good state schools expand.

Bravo! Making every school 'grant maintained', paid according to how many kids they attract, is a good move.

But you need to get national politicians and civil-servants out of education too. With so much money coming from the centre, it's too tempting to tell schools how to spend it. With so much power at the centre, the threat of yet more regulation and paperwork is large.

So let the government go the whole hog. Fix on a cash figure per pupil. Give schools that amount, multiplied by the number of kids they attract. Set out basic output standards, but let the schools themselves work out how best to reach them. Then sit back. Before too long, the best state schools will have expanded and taken over the bad ones. New schools will have started up. Mr Blair's deep desire to improve state education will have been achieved.

Tonight on Radio 4, Chris Woodhead, Britain's former Chief Inspector of Schools, gave a robust case for less central government control of schools. Maybe inspections have had their day, he said, suggesting that if all parents had real choice, we wouldn't need OFSTED as a way of pulling up standards.

The role of the brand in education has been given a further boost by the decision of a top London private school, Dulwich College, to manage a a 'city academy' school, largely but not entirely funded by the government. Dulwich will do the management and quality control.

This is good news. Yet the National Union of Teachers recently hit out against the idea of brands in schools, claiming that it would lead to a supermarket-style market in education. Well, Dulwich is really rather good at education. I'm sure most people would prefer their children's education to be protected by the Dulwich brand and management, than the control of a Local Education Authority.

The real problem with government education policy is that it is all too tame. The government thinks of something good, and then limits it to only a few state school pupils. Good on Dulwich for rising to the challenge, but what we need is a real reforming agenda from the Department of Education. We need one which will improve quality across the entire state sector, not just in a few spots.

The Observer newspaper today published an interview with Michael Moore, the anti-Bush, anti-war film-maker. It is not a particularly favourable interview, portraying Moore as someone who doesn't treat ordinary people well, and it points to possible inconsistencies between his claims and reality. But one thing stood out in the interview like a sore thumb: he gave a defence of school choice:

'Every parent wants to do what's best for their child. Whatever I can afford, I'm going to get my kid the best education I can get.

'I'm not a liberal. When you come from the working class and you do well enough whereby you can provide a little bit better for your family, get a decent roof over their head and send them to a good school, that's considered a good thing. If,' he emphasises, 'you're from the working class. What's bad about it is if you get to do that and then shut the door behind you so nobody else can do that.'

Indeed. Too many on the Left are willing to send their children to private or selective state schools, but oppose the idea that this choice should be extended to everyone else. Education is just too important to be controlled by meddling bureaucrats and teacher unions. Increasing parental choice is essential if we want to improve our schools.

UK Education minister Charles Clark says that he's happy to pay for 6th-form kids to take courses at private schools - allowing them to study A-level subjects not offered by their own state school.

This may not apply to many kids, but as the London Evening Standard points out, it 'breaks one of the last great taboos of the Labour Party', the fetish that education should be delivered by the state, and not privately.

Now that the principle is broken, why doesn't the government get out of education provision entirely? Why doesn't is just pay for kids to go to the school of their choice, and have independent groups providing those schools? That's exactly what happens in welfare - the state doesn't run grocers stores or clothing shops: it gives needy people the money to buy these essentials, and lets a dynamic and competitive market provide them. And indeed, in health now, the government is paying for some NHS patients to be treated in private hospitals. So why cling to the taboo?

Every right must be claimed off someone. To say that there is a right to free education is to say that some groups in society have a morally binding obligation to pay for the supply of it for others. Education is not plucked from trees; resources, including skilled labour, have to be put into its production. Someone has to pay for those resources.

If people paid for education directly, the parents and children who consumed it would determine the level of supply, and would choose on the basis of price and quality. They would take into account its future value to them, and the type of it appropriate to their needs.

When the state takes on the task of providing education, it puts it into the political arena, where interest groups vie to have it address their view of what should be taught. Too often quality of education is sacrificed in order to achieve social goals such as equality, or to pursue currently fashionable ideas about child psychology. Too often it is captured by producers, and parents lose their power as consumers to influence it..

Instead of talking of rights, we might do better to say we prefer to live in a society where no-one is denied access to education on account of poverty. This means transferring enough resources to poorer people to enable them to afford a decent education. It could be done by cash payments, vouchers or scholarships and bursaries. It does not need the state to enter the production of education or to direct its output.

State-dominated Britain worries too much about inputs and not enough about
outputs.

Everyone at the recent Reform conference in London on school choice was truly inspired by Kole Knueppel, Headteacher of St Marcus, a 'choice' school in the middle of a drug-invested, crime-ridden, impoverished black area of Milwaukee. His teachers walk the streets and hit the phones to recruit new kids to the school - unlike the UK, Milwaukee's 'choice' system means that schools only get money if they attract and retain pupils and satisfy parents.

They get some really rough kids, but through hard work and commitment - starting at 7.45am, finishing at 4pm, then maybe putting in another couple of hours helping particular kids - and being available to the kids 24hours on the mobile phone - they turn round those kids and enable them to make something of themselves. One new kid had got up and punched both him and a school visitor: but through this 'tough love' approach, went on to become a star pupil.

Nice talk. Then popped up a representative of the National Union of Teachers, who condemned him for making light of long hours and assaults on teachers. "After all, teachers have rights."

"Well, I'm interested in the right of disadvantaged kids to learn and make something of their lives," he replied. "If a potential teacher came in to me and the first thing they talked about was their own rights rather than the needs of the kids, I'd tell them they were in the wrong profession."

Absolutely. Nice to see the NUT person skewered. But it shows you how far the energies of our public servants has become focused on their own interests rather than those whom they are supposed to serve. It's going to be hard work to turn that around.

Some supporters of state education in Britain accuse selective schools and private schools of creaming off talent which would otherwise remain in the state comprehensive schools to benefit the other children. Parents who choose these alternative schools are accused of selfishness.

The argument has interesting assumptions. In Britain those who pay towards their child's education receive no rebate. They have to pay for the state education they do not use as well as the fee-paying one. They leave more resources in the state system as a result of their choice, which does not seem selfish.

The idea that academically gifted children, if they attended sub-standard state schools, would somehow inspire and motivate the others, is strange. It seems to belong to the fairy tales which social engineers tell each other round the camp-fires. In the real world such children are often bullied and demotivated, and scorned because study lacks any street-cred. Educated with others of their kind, however, they can become high achievers.

More offensive is the notion that bright children are a precious resource, owned by the state, to be shared out equally. Their own hopes and aspirations, and those of their parents, apparently don't count. They are to be treated instead as the mere instruments of an egalitarian state. We know where that leads.

It might be more productive to devise ways in which the choice of a better school can be extended to all parents, without anyone being forced to take the sub-standard, producer-dominated model which is far too prevalent.

The National Union of Students, which yesterday protested a House of Commons vote on tuition fees, might not like to hear the words of Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850):

The state is the great fiction by which everybody tries to live at the expense of everybody else.

The NUS might like the state to massively increase its contribution, but the sort of increases necessary are not politically possible. With so many demands on the public purse, the government cannot do everything. However, if we want our universities to be world-leading institutions, we do need to spend more money on them. We also need to spend the money better. We need universities to be more student-centred, and less producer-centred. The principle of variable top-up fees is an essential first stage in freeing universities from decline, and enabling competition to push up quality.

The real alternative is thus between tuition fees and low-quality universities. If the NUS really wanted what is in the best interests of its members, it would be backing the government, not opposing it.

The University of Nottingham is setting up a new university campus in China, and already has one in Malaysia. Similarly, Dulwich College, a London independent school, is creating a chain of schools in China, based on the original. This follows the success of Dulwich International College in Thailand.

These educational establishments are able to set up chains because they have excellent reputations. People overseas know their children will get a decent education. If we want to improve school standards in Britain, maybe there is a role for chains to play within the our system too?

The Conservatives have proposed a schools 'passport' - the idea being that parents can choose which school they want their children to go to, and then the government's money follows that choice. This is certainly better than the present system, where state money is allocated by various layers of bureaucrats and parents have very little real choice.

Of course, critics argue that the 'passport' idea would give aid to rich families who use private schools already. If everyone gets 'passport' cash, and if it can be used in non-state schools as well as state schools, then hard-pressed taxpayers end up helping toffs pay their school fees.

So there are signs that the Tories are bottling out, and thinking of restricting the 'passports' to state schools only. Whatever use is that?

In theory, parents can already choose between state schools - though local authorities are expert at thwarting that choice. If a 'passport' simply gives you the right to move within the state system, what's new?

The whole point of passports is to evoke new supply. In Sweden, where the idea was introduced recently, many hundreds of new, independent schools have sprung up, knowing that the government's money will follow the choices made by parents. So these new schools - many of them founded by fed-up parents and teachers - make sure they are attractive to parents by providing a good education on the lines that parents want their kids to have. That in turn has put a strong competitive pressure on municipal schools to improve.

Sure, if you give every parent a 'passport' and allow them to put some of its value towards independent school fees, you will be subsidizing a few people who already use private education. But at last you are giving an escape route to all the millions who don't because they can't presently afford it. That sounds like a good deal. The rest of Europe - Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands - aren't hung up on this and all allow parents to take state money into non-state schooling. Why should we be frightened of it?

Spiked Online isn't too impressed with Government-commissioned thinking on school exams:

'The time for reform has come', said Mike Tomlinson, leader of the government-commissioned working party on the future of England's schools examinations system, as he produced his interim report on 14-19 education.

What, again? Over the past few years England's exams have undergone more reform than the pupils sitting them have had hot dinners. Each one has had the effect of diminishing the standard of work expected from young people, as a challenging curriculum and demanding tests have given way to content and assessment designed to put children under less pressure. It's not yet more exam reform that is needed, but higher educational standards - and an end to the obsession with qualifications altogether.

In theory, student unions are voluntary. In practice, they are not. Those students who object to the political agenda of the union find it not worth the hassle to leave. At Durham the Debating Society is not affiliated to the student union, but at many it is. So it's a case of: leave the student union, lose your membership of debating society. Same with other societies. Students who contemplate leaving realise that unions have monopolies - granted by their university's administration and by lawmakers - for all manner of small, but often important, things in student life.

And students who leave their student union don't even get their money back. Students can't take away their representation money and give it to another body they think represents them better.

What can be done? Below is one possibility. Feel free to suggest better ones in the comments.

The government should break up student unions, making the political and services sides independent. The political side at each university would be known as the Students' Representative Council (SRC), and funded by a voluntary subscription from students. (Incidentally, nearly 75% of student unions in the US are funded directly by students.)

Everything else would become the Students' Services Centre (SSC), which would own the union premises, run the bar, manage entertainments and fund student societies. Its trust dead would prevent it from political campaigning or giving money from external political causes. The SSC would be self-financing.