Educational standards will only improve if parents have a greater say about where their children are taught and if there is more incentive to change poorly performing schools into good schools.
Since devolution, spending per pupil in Scotland has more than doubled yet educational achievement has remained static or got worse. That is not acceptable, nor is the fact that there has been a disproportionately harmful effect on some of the most disadvantaged pupils in the system. The Scottish Conservatives believe this situation has arisen because poorly performing schools have few or no incentives to reform.
The Scottish Conservatives have announced a policy commitment which will allow parents to take their child out of a poorly performing school and place them in a school of their choice where standards are better. This would happen by the simple transfer of the taxpayers’ money spent on educating that child from one school to the other. In other words the revenue of the school will depend on that school’s ability to attract pupils.
The Scottish Conservatives are also proposing that a pupil premium is paid to those pupils most in need in our disadvantaged areas and to those with special educational needs. Every local community has a right to have good schools on its doorstep but this will only happen if there is far more incentive to provide good school places everywhere. Our children deserve no less.