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State Schools (Independence)

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I and many other Members have been approached an extraordinary number of times by parents who cannot understand why they are not allowed to exercise effective choice because of arbitrary boundaries and catchment areas. The system is wrong, and it needs to be changed. We need to set schools free, and we could begin by allowing schools to control their own admissions policies. We should allow schools to have charitable status—what we might call trust status—and the freedom to set their own budgets. I shall say in a moment how we need to reform funding of the education system.