ABSTRACT
The market place philosophy is so robust that only massive public pressure can save the values it threatens to destroy, so that the task of winning popular support for those values is urgent. The market place philosophy rests on superficially reasonable comparisons between education and other goods and services. The feature they all have in common is that they make the quality of education available to a child dependent on the ability of parents to choose, to support and ultimately to pay. In between are all the variants of the voucher idea, the essence of which is to turn a child's basic entitlement to education into a piece of paper, to be exchanged at the parents' chosen school. Local education authorities and governors must publish their criteria and must include the numbers to be admitted to each school. Some versions confine vouchers to state schools, while others would allow the use of vouchers in part-payment for private schools.
