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State Schools (Independence)

I do not think that that would happen. If the model that my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich discussed were accepted, and head teachers had genuinely independent powers over their curriculum, is it really believable that every school in an entire county or large town would follow the same progressive model? In fact, under that model, other schools would develop and parents would vote with their feet. Do we have no self-confidence? As Conservatives, we believe in a traditional form of teaching. We believe that that works and that many modern teaching fashions have corrupted education. Do we really have so little confidence in professionals, teachers and parents that we believe that if they were given complete freedom, all of them in an entire county would move to an extreme form of progressive education? If that happened, however, it would of course happen under my hon. Friend’s model presumably only because that was what teachers, head teachers and parents wanted. If they want it, let them have it—but I do not think that it would happen.