Tories may give parents power to set up schools

Parents, teachers and voluntary groups who are dissatisfied with state education should be allowed to set up their own private schools, under radical plans being considered by the Conservative Party.

The Tories are examining the Danish model of private education, where the government pays most of the cost to the school while parents make up the difference by paying fees. A fact-finding trip to Denmark last week was the latest in a number of visits made by the shadow front bench as part of a policy review.

Damian Green, the party's education spokesman, has already suggested giving parents the freedom to found their own institutions based on American "charter schools", which offer free education, often to disaffected black youngsters.

He has also visited the Netherlands, where parents have a constitutional right to open a school and have it funded by the state if they can attract enough children to make it viable.

Mr Green quietly dropped plans floated by the Tory leader, Iain Duncan Smith, last year to introduce education vouchers, which parents could put towards the cost of private schooling. He said: "The most important thing is, do we have enough choice in the system? The people we are most interested in helping are the least likely to be able to afford to pay anything at all."

Denmark has a long tradition of private schools that receive substantial subsidies from the government. The country's education system is one of the most expensive in Europe and a recent study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development cast doubt on whether it was delivering on its taxpayers' investment.

Danish students were outclassed by British youngsters in all tests, with Denmark ranking 16th out of 31 countries for literacy – compared with Britain's 7th – 12th for maths and 22nd for science.

The country's state schools or folkeskoles, which means people's schools, are for seven to 16-year-olds and tend to be inclusive all-ability schools that do not focus strongly on exams. Pupils do not wear uniforms, and staff and students call each other by their first names. Increasingly parents are rejecting the folkeskoles in favour of private schools which require them to pay fees.

About 12 per cent of all children at basic school level now attend private schools. But this figure soars to about 25 per cent in the capital, Copenhagen, where many parents are concerned about their children sharing a class with pupils from immigrant families or those with social problems.

In 2000, the state contributed nearly £3,000 per pupil per year, while parents paid an average of about £700 in fees.

ButNina Raaschou, an adviser for Copenhagen's education department, believes the increase in the popularity of private schools is damaging the system as a whole.

She said: "This causes the public schools in Copenhagen a problem by creating a social imbalance ... we are facing a ghetto for the rich and a ghetto for the poor."

But Mr Green believes this shows parents' determination to seek out the best education for their children. He said: "The main thing I took away from my visit to Copenhagen was that even in a society as casual and non-hierarchical as Denmark's, clearly there is a demand for a slightly stricter sort of education than people are getting in mainstream schools."