Tories plan to create 5,000 new schools

Isabel Oakeshott, Deputy Political Editor

UP to 5,000 new private schools funded by the taxpayer are to be created under Tory plans to revolutionise the way children are taught.

David Cameron will this week reveal the scale of the party’s ambitions to transform the education system, detailing proposals to replace failing comprehensives and primaries with new “free” schools run by parents, charities and private firms.

They will be given extraordinary freedom to set their own curriculum and will be allowed to abandon GCSEs and A-levels in favour of the International Baccalaureate, European or American exams.

A senior Tory source said: “The mission to shake up our failing schools will be the central feature of our campaign to become the next government.”

The Tories believe the independently run schools - funded by the state - will have huge appeal among middle-class families who have deserted the maintained sector under Labour. They even believe that traditional fee-paying schools could be forced to close, or to join the new scheme, as parents opt back into the reformed state system.

The plans are likely to provoke a showdown with the teaching unions, who fear the loss of national pay bargaining.

Last night Labour ministers labelled the move a “risky experiment”, saying they were a “recipe for chaos”.

The full extent of the Conservatives’ plans were set out by Michael Gove, the shadow education secretary, on the eve of the Tory party conference in Birmingham. In an interview with The Sunday Times he said: “It is our intention from day one to make the changes necessary to get new providers into the state school system. We want as much choice for parents as possible.”

Tory high command has been rattled by a sudden narrowing of the party’s lead in the opinion polls. It has fallen from 28 points to 10. Conservative MPs are under strict orders from spin doctors not to appear “complacent” about victory at the next election.

Preparations for government are already well under way, with a “grid” being drawn up for the first 100 days in power. Privately, the party is so confident of winning that Francis Maude, shadow minister for the Cabinet Office, has written to Sir Gus O’Donnell, head of the civil service, asking for two civil servants to be seconded to Conservative Central Office to smooth the transition.

In a new policy, the Tories plan to appoint 12 chief executives from the private sector to act as “superheads” for each Whitehall department.

The new schools will be presented as an expansion of the state system. They will be modelled on a Swedish scheme in which 900 independently run schools have been established in 15 years.

Under the Swedish model, parents can shop around for their children’s education, with admissions offered on a first come, first served basis. Privately operated schools receive a set sum from the taxpayer for every pupil registered.

Organisations would receive a higher fee per pupil in deprived areas to encourage them to open schools there. The schools would not be allowed to make a profit.

Gove pointed out that there are six times as many pupils in England as there are in Sweden, implying that, in the long term, up to 5,400 new schools could spring up in England if the model were equally successful here. In Sweden the new schools had “helped to raise standards for all”.

He added: “The experience from Sweden is that people who used to be educated privately are now educated in state schools. I would expect the same thing would happen here and would welcome it.”

An independent licensing agency would regulate the system to guard against inappropriate organisations opening schools.

It is predicted that poorly performing state schools would be forced to raise their standards or to close.

Jim Knight, the schools minister, said that Gove should “come clean about the true cost of his Swedish experiment”.

The Conservatives also plan to open hundreds of city academy primary schools based on Labour’s successful academy scheme.