ABSTRACT
A package of radical measures is needed for implementation now, or at least immediately after the next general election. The radical proposals offered in this paper constitute an election manifesto for schools for any party with the courage and foresight to adopt it and to implement it. Let us have no more grand announcements, no more ‘policies in principle’; let us get down to the ‘nitty-gritty’, to specific proposals which should and could be implemented. These proposals assume far less control, by both the Department of Education and Science and the local education authorities. The proposals are therefore bound to offend an enormous vested interest, namely that great army of civil servants, both local and central, now concerned with the running of education. Many of those civil servants, however well meaning and well intentioned, will be offended by proposals which shift power away from them. They have come to assume that they, collectively, are better placed to run education than almost anyone else, and that their wisdom is greater than that of anyone else, and most particularly greater than that of the parents.
