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Stephen Pollard

ByStephen Pollard, Stephen Pollard

Opinion

Our mad school system

April 11, 2008 24:00
1 min read

Some of the comments at Coffee House miss the point about on Poole council's 'spying' on parents to check that they live where they say do: The report in the Telegraph is misleading. RIPA did not give any powers to local authoriities. It restricted the use of powers they already had. But surely the real point of this story is not the law under which such investigations were carried out, or their efficacy. It's rather the sheer lunacy of a school system in which catchment areas and bureaucratic diktat matter and which entails such checks.

So what if someone lives in one part of town where schools are rubbish and wants their child to go to a better school in another part of town? Nothing will ever improve until we have a system in which parents rather than LEA employees choose childrens' schools, and in which schools expand or contract depending on that parental choice.