Nikki Schreiber: Why can't the English be more like the Dutch?

If we want better schools for our children we need to spend more money, don't we? Well actually, no. Education in the UK has been tested and found wanting; any doubts, go to the Progress in International Literacy Study of last year, or the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2006 survey, or even the Cambridge Primary Review. Basically, it's a "could do better" situation. And if this weren't enough, there's the 2007 Unicef report that rates the UK as the worst place in the developed world for a child to grow up.

The country that came top of the Unicef report and did consistently well in the international league tables was the Netherlands. At an educational psychology conference recently I was talking to a teacher who said to me, "You've worked in the Netherlands, your children went to school there, why are they doing better than we are? Are we just not spending enough?"

The surprising answer is that their results have nothing to do with money – in fact, they're spending quite a lot less than we are. And it looks as though it has everything to do with choice. They have it, and we don't.

This is how it works: each pupil has a price tag, and the cost of educating a child goes directly to the school that the parents have chosen, state or private, from the Ministry of Education. Not all the price tags are the same; they're weighted according to a child's socio-economic background, so that the child of an asylum seeker who doesn't speak any Dutch will have a relatively larger price tag to account for the extra services he or she might need.

All schools have to be approved by the Ministry of Education, but as long as that approval is gained, a group of parents can set up a new school in the full knowledge that all pupils come with a price tag and the local council will provide the school building. The government controls staffing levels and pay.

Schools are monitored by the Ministry of Education – it's the same system of regular visits from school inspectors – and the national curriculum must be taught and exams taken. But how the curriculum is taught is up to the school and a staggering 70 per cent of children attend independent schools. Well, they call them independent schools but it doesn't have the same meaning as in the UK. For a start they cost a fraction of the price, because of each child's right to a price tag and the provision of the school premises; most independent schools in the Netherlands charge about 500 euros a year per pupil, and there's no equivalent to Eton. This means that there are a lot of different styles of schools: Steiner, Montessori, international/bilingual (generally more expensive) and faith schools. There really is a great deal of choice and no such thing as a catchment area.

This amount of choice and accessibility means that parents are in the driving seat; if they choose not to send their children to a school because it's underperforming, then the school will eventually have to reform or close because it won't be receiving enough price tags and the building will go to another school. It is the parents who decide the fate of schools rather than the government.

Not being constrained by catchment areas also gives parents more choice – in the Netherlands it seems to work along the lines of, "if I can get there by bike it's an option". But what it really means is that parents don't snare themselves in mortgages to get into catchment areas they can't afford, or pay expensive school fees or face the humiliation of having to rediscover a lapsed faith. They can choose whichever school will suit their child best. Not all parents make an active choice but enough do to influence the standard of schools everywhere.

All this is based on the fact that parental choice in education is a part of the Dutch constitution. It assumes that one size does not fit all.The Netherlands may be a smaller and wealthier country than the UK, but they have a huge number of ethnic minorities and children turning up to school without any Dutch. There is choice though, and Dutch children are in the upper quartile of the international tables, which might help explain why the Netherlands is rated as the best place for a child to grow up in the developed world.

The UK doesn't need to spend more money on education. We need a new system instead, one that sorts out the lack of choice and the polemic between the worst state and the best private schooling; something that's fairer and raises standards overall.