Douglas Carswell's Blog

Education: can you decentralise from the centre?

Funding schools direct, rather than through local councils, might be a brilliant idea. 

Rather than a centralising measure, perhaps it is a decentralising measure in that it passes power to the schools themselves.  Perhaps.

Maybe it is also a bit of a clever wheeze in terms of local government finance.  Without spending the education budgets, what councils spend will be closer to what they raise in revenue. 

And yet.  And yet.

It means a new IPSA-type quango - and quangocrats.  And how many quangocrat do you know who hold small state conservative values?      

It puts in place the architecture of even greater central state control.  Can you imagine ministers starting to attach various conditions in return for the funding schools get?  We might like the bit about "proper history", but what about the things lefty ministers will demand?   

In this paper for the Institute of Economic Affairs, I specifically warned of the dangers of trying to decentralise from the centre in this way.  

My paper showed how it might be done instead.  Rather than push power down to schools, why not give it direct to mums and dads, via a legal right to request and receive control over their child's share of local education funding?  Like letting folk buy their council houses, that would allow decentralisation to happen as folk follow their own self-interest, not at the request of Whitehall.....

Back to all posts