Parental choice—antidote to education's mandarin syndrome

The rising discontent with the falling standards of schools in our large cities may cause a radical rethink of their method of financing and organisation which could be very salutary indeed. At the moment more and more money is poured into city schools, particularly in London; yet truancy rates rocket, literacy and numeracy decline, and violence and indiscipline are threatened in almost every school. It is very possible that more expenditure, smaller classes, more new buildings and more support services will do nothing to rectify these problems. Indeed all these so‐called ‘improvements’ have existed in parallel with the continued decline of the standards of state city schools.