Conservative Education Policy

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What is the Tory line on schools and universities?
"Parents must be given extensive power to chose schools for their children," the shadow chancellor, Oliver Letwin, recently said. For the Conservative party, it is all about parents: the party recently pledged to introduce "Better School Passports", a voucher scheme to give parents financial control over their children's education, along with vocational technical colleges funded in a similar way. The party is committed to matching Labour's current spending plans on schools for two years, after which it wants to move toward greater private funding for education.

On universities, meanwhile, the traditional Tory line of slimming down state involvement is reversed: the party is committed to abolishing fees, which inevitably means the state being more involved.

What is the Better School passport scheme?
The Tories labelled Better School Passports as their schools "revolution" at their party conference last October. Under the scheme, parents would be given cash for their child's education as a voucher, and could decide what school to spend it on. A Conservative government would kick off the scheme with a £400m pilot in six deprived inner-city areas after the next general election. But the term "voucher" has pointedly not been used, in an attempt to avoid comparisons with the Tories' ill-fated nursery voucher scheme, which resulted in the closures of dozens of nurseries in the 1990s.

Would schools themselves change?
Yes. The Tories want to see many more groups getting involved in running schools. They want to deregulate the cap on school rolls to allow the best schools to expand (and presumably others to decline) and, according to their head of policy co-ordination, David Willets, to get more "cut-priced" privately financed schools. They want to see more competition in the private school market and more involvement from parents and local community groups in running schools - so you would get faith-based organisations running schools with their own special ethos. Like Labour, they are preaching the mantra of school choice for parents.

Anything else destined for schools?
School-parent agreements are, according to an education spokesperson, high on the Tories' agenda. These would provide a mechanism by which parents could become more involved in their children's work - in good times and bad.

Why would a Tory government drop tuition fees?
When in government, top-up fees were also on the Tories' agenda - but at the height of the backlash against the Labour government over the issues, the then Conservative shadow education secretary, Damian Green, reversed the policy. The Tories said they would drop all fees, along with plans to widen participation and extend student numbers: fewer places, but better quality, was the mantra.

Is that still their commitment?
Officially, yes. But that could change. A traditional Tory plan has been mooted which would see a Conservative government privatise universities, offer tax breaks to businesses that donate or work with universities, and create a major "endowment" funded by the sale of disused parts of the TV and radio spectrums and possibly the privatisation of Channel 4. Today a spokesperson, asked whether the abolition of fees was still the policy, said: "Yes, but watch this space."

What about vocational training?
Pupils would be divided at 13 between those receiving technical and academic education under Tory plans. The proposals would see some teenagers opting out of GCSEs, and learning instead to "wire up a studio or repair a wall". This would involve the creation of business-technical schools, which might also work on a voucher system.

Some analysis

This dismal package from Cameron...