It is in the interests of local authorities to make sure no school becomes outstanding

Why are local authorities so bad at PR? Don’t they realise they are engaged in a political fight for their lives? The nub of the Tories’ education policy — though they don’t express it like this — is to wrest control of state education away from local authorities. Given that educational provision is the chief responsibility of local authorities, they are in danger of losing their raison d’être.

The main criticism of local education authorities is that they haven’t done enough to raise standards. As David Cameron pointed out earlier this week, the number of boys at Eton who received three As at A-level last year is greater than the total number of boys eligible for free school meals who received comparable results. That is a scandalous statistic and a reflection of the fact that access to high-performing schools is largely restricted to the rich. The main exceptions are faith schools and the remaining grammar schools — and the reason they’re so successful is that they have a variety of mechanisms in place to protect them from local authority interference.