Why should we put up with poor schools?

George Osborne is now coming under fire for finding a school for his children outside the state system. He is repeating the "sin" of David Cameron before him, insearching out a good school for his children.

It has to be said that despite of "education, education, education", and billions of pounds of extra money pumped into education over the past 10 years, and countless changes of policy and gimmick, little has improved. In fact, with dumbing down of educational assessments, we now have employers unable to recruit graduates in part because they lack basic literacy and numeracy.

Those who scream at Cameron and Osborne, and others, are now resorting to lottery on school attendance, to make sure that all classes and family have an equal risk of suffering a poor school.

One proposal is to to resurrect the comprehensive schools by having all ability ranges but with streaming, that is to try to have something like the old grammar schools under the same roof. I have considerable doubts about this attempt to maintain an ideology.

The principle objection is the size of school implied. To have all abilities catered for separately, including a large sixth form, and across all the subjects, including artistic, musical, sporting, must mean a huge school for all subjects to be viable in number of students. Size is daunting, and many large comprehensives already divide into sections.

The other question is about ethos - whether the academic attitude to study can be maintained in a school where the vast majority do not share it.

But there is an alternative.

The Americans discovered in some states, and the Swedes seem to have accepted wholeheartedly, a revolution on the supply side.

Since 1993 in Sweden the Government will pay a fixed amount per pupil to any organisation, passing basic tests, which opens a school. So charities, churches, companies have opened schools. Hundreds of new schools were opened in the first few years.

The number of consequences is staggering.
- pupils choose schools and not the other way round. In fact schools are in competition, and the bad ones have to do something about their deficiencies. If a school does not meet aspirations, in standards, subjects offered, or ethos, children will go elsewhere.
- there are no waiting lists - if one school faces a demand surplus, they open another.
- Sweden, having no need of a vast bureaucracy, spends no more on education than the UK does, but it has a system was is child orientated, rather than producer orientated, and is very responsive to its society, rather than political ideologues.

There is an alternative - bad schools put right, changes arrive from bottom up, every child getting to the school of choice, and standards much higher than here. What are we afraid of?