Scottish Tories call for parent power in schools
SCOTTISH Tory leader Ruth Davidson will today pledge to put “parent power” at the heart of a radical shake-up of Scotland’s schools and nurseries.
She will demand new laws to give parents the right to remove their child’s school from local authority control in a bid to tackle the country’s “stagnating” education system.
Ms Davidson will also unveil plans for a new childcare credit scheme allowing families to choose where and when to take up the free nursery care to which youngsters are already entitled.
She will hail this as a “far-reaching reform that could help transform the lives of thousands of hard-pressed Scottish families”.
The Glasgow list MSP will tell the Scottish Conservative conference in Edinburgh that her proposals would give “more choice for parents” and would put “more power in the hands of the people”.
Children aged three and four, and some vulnerable two-year-olds, are entitled to 600 hours of free nursery care a year but some parents complain they cannot get a place at their child’s nursery or at a time that suits their family.
Parents could use the party’s proposed childcare credit scheme at registered childminders as well as pre-schools and nurseries in both the public and private sectors.
If parents are entitled to a set number of nursery care hours, they should have the greatest choice possible over where to use them
Ms Davidson is expected to say: “If parents are entitled to a set number of nursery care hours, they should have the greatest choice possible over where to use them. And they don’t have that now.
“Parents’ choice is limited to council-run nurseries or providers that the council has already signed up.”
Ms Davidson also wants to see power over schools, and their budgets, wrested away from councils to allow parents and local communities the right to opt out of local authority control, so long as they can show it will improve children’s education.
Such a move would spell the end of Scotland’s “one size fits all” approach to education and would be bitterly resisted by both councils and teaching unions.
Scotland has just one mainstream grant-maintained secondary school, Jordanhill in Glasgow, which is outwith local authority control.
It is regularly among the top academic performers in the country, with exam results matching the best private schools.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has dismissed plans to free up schools and head teachers from local authority control as “ideological nonsense”, Ms Davidson will say.
But she will add: “People all around the world of no political persuasion have seen the value in allowing parents and communities far more say in the running of their local school.”
