Pounds 1.4bn education plan released

STUDENTS would pay a flat-rate charge for university courses, class sizes would be reduced and 95 per cent of four-year-olds would receive nursery education under a pounds 1.4bn package of changes presented by an independent commission yesterday.

The National Commission on Education, in a 400-page report, attacks the Government for creating 'sink' schools and an educational underclass. It says the reforms could be funded by a 1 per cent rise in basic income tax, a 0.8 per cent rise in value-added tax or a 0.4 per cent rise in National Insurance contributions. Nursery education expansion would cost pounds 860m.

Sir Claus Moser, former Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, who suggested the commission after the Government rejected his idea of a Royal Commission, said: 'Education is the one form of national spending which links with everything else, such as the state of the economy. The bill is not outrageous when you view it in the long term.'

Many of the 16-member commission's proposals were included in the Independent's Schools Charter two years ago.

Radical agenda, page 3

Leading article, page 17

Teach the parents first, page 18