For some time, David Cameron has been looking for an unpopular education policy. To be heard, he believes, one needs to be attacked. He has already been denounced for his ‘hug a hoodie’ speech and for promoting the family. The ensuing arguments, he feels, moved the party forward. So how to repeat the trick with education? He only half-jokingly rejected proposals as being ‘not unpopular enough’. Well: if it was a fight he was after, he will not have been disappointed.
The past week in Westminster has been not about Gordon Brown or his ideas for the future, but about the Conservatives and their internal battle over grammar schools. David Willetts has had more exposure in the past week than he has in his entire career as shadow education secretary. Mr Cameron has once again slipped into his favourite role, playing St George to the dragon of the wicked Tory Right. And the fight is still raging.
Yet if all this were, as some Cameroons claim, a roaring success, we would, by now, have some idea what precisely the Conservatives do propose on education. We are yet again left in no doubt what Mr Cameron does not like (selective education, the 2005 Tory manifesto, Simon Heffer), but he is still too vague about what he actually supports. And this is a tragedy, because the system Mr Willetts seems to be proposing could become a more potent force for social mobility than a reimposition of grammar schools ever could.
Mr Cameron appears inclined toward a version of the voucher system that transformed Swedish education when it was introduced in 1992. The dynamics are as simple as they are powerful. Any qualified teachers can set up a school, as long as they prove there is a demand and meet minimum standards. The state pays them a fixed amount per pupil: about £5,000 per year.
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