The evidence of failure in Britain’s schools, despite the best efforts of recent governments, suggests that standards of education cannot be raised by central diktat. Rather, now is the time to return freedom to schools.
The author’s vision of education is informed by two principles. The first is that improving the quality of teaching in schools can only be achieved through improving the quality of educational leadership in schools.
The second is that the way to build the requisite calibre of leadership in schools is to empower them with the freedom and authority to run schools as they think right, while keeping them publicly accountable for their performance.
It is a truly decentralising agenda. Power and freedom would be returned to schools so that they can provide the education which parents want for their children.
These reforms will not only help good schools to prosper: they will, crucially, also lift poor schools out of the cycle of failure that has too often blighted the future of too many children.
