Choice in Education (2)

Margaret says in her comment:

Choice has led to the break-up of good small schools, the loss of cohesion of communities, excessive large-car use and a reduction in children’s exercise as they no longer walk to school. The overall quality of education in this country does not appear to have improved as choice has widened.

I can agree that there are these negatives to the present system of choice. I wonder though if we could design a better system.

If you accept that individual children should ideally have their own education designed around them, no standardised approach can ever be right. One of the troubles though is that parents are given no incentive to do anything except fight for the 'best' school for their child. - At least before the child is committed to a given school, perhaps , after entry, they can influence outcomes in the school.

But if we moved to some sort of voucher system, the value of the voucher could reflect the local education authority's asssessment of the social value of the solution. So a child that went out of area might be offered a lower value voucher. Then the receiving school has a choice: to accept or demand a direct parental top-up contribution. That would make them think!