Free schools from council control, urges think tank

CONTROL of Scotland’s schools should be removed from local councils and handed to head teachers, according to a think-tank report published yesterday.

The Policy Institute report also called for parents to be given state-funded vouchers which would entitle their sons and daughters to attend the school of their choice.

According to the study Setting Schools Free, the changes would drive up standards and improve the academic performance of pupils.

Frank Gerstenberg, the report’s author, said local council control of state schools "weakens the authority of the head, which discourages initiative and innovation".

"It is not the type of ownership - state, private or charitable - that is necessarily important so much as the degree of managerial independence exercised by the head and the board," Mr Gerstenberg, the former headmaster of George Watson’s school in Edinburgh, added.

Mr Gerstenberg’s report also pointed to countries such as Denmark, Sweden and Holland, where voucher schemes have been introduced in the state education sector, as proof that the policy works.

The report also said families from poorer backgrounds could be given higher value vouchers so their children could attend the country’s best schools. The report said: "Greater parental choice using vouchers would raise standards, encourage new schools, reduce the need for government regulation and encourage innovative teaching methods.

"Studies of voucher schemes in various countries, including deprived communities, show that they do not encourage social division.

"A system where everyone has the opportunity to send their children to the school of their choice is the only way to restore the Scottish education system to its ancient pre-eminence."

Elsewhere, the report also called on the Executive to set up an independent review of the performance of Scottish state schools compared to the rest of the world.

The report was last night welcomed by the Scottish Conservatives, who have called for schools to have greater managerial freedom and for parents to be given increased choice.

Lord James Douglas-Hamilton, the Tories’ education spokesman, said: "We want much greater control of schools in the hands of head teachers and school boards and any proposals along those lines we would look at sympathetically.

"We also support funding following the pupil to the school of their parents’ choice. This could conceivably be done by way of a voucher scheme, but even if there was no physical piece of paper, our policy would put purchasing power into the hands of the parents."

But the report’s findings were dismissed by the Executive and council leaders, who insisted Scotland’s state schools were already performing well.

The Rev Ewan Aitken, the education spokesman for the local authority umbrella group COSLA, rejected calls for councils to lose control of state schools.

He said: "This idea has been thrown out before and should be thrown out again. This has nothing to do with education and everything to do with creating schools as commodities.

"We have a good balance between the strategic thinking of authorities and local delivery - why should we change that?"

A spokesman for the Executive said ministers had no intention of changing the status quo with regard to the management of schools.

He also said that while the introduction of vouchers was not on the Executive’s agenda, parents were free to make placing requests to their local authority.

He said: "We believe education authorities are best placed to make decisions that suit local needs and we have no plans to remove schools from local authority control.

"We have already given head teachers control over much of their school budgets and we’re committed to increasing that to a minimum of 80 per cent and moving it towards 90 per cent.

"Ministers are committed to making all schools excellent - no pupil should have to choose between schools in order to access a first-class education."