Tory plans for education jobs 'costly and unworkable'

Conservative plans to allow parents to take charge of education jobs in their local community have been branded impracticable by one critic.

According to Jamie O'Connell, marketing director of the Student Room website, splitting schools into autonomous units with groups of parents in charge of operations would prove unworkable as few have the necessary time available to invest.

He said: "While smaller class sizes and more parental involvement are a fantastic ambition, I don't feel it can be achieved for the majority of students.

"Lots of 'bespoke' schools would be costly to fund and parents go out to work and in many cases simply aren't able to help their children."

However, the Conservatives say that allowing large schools to split into smaller, parent-led institutions would result in reduced class sizes, higher quality staff employed in teaching jobs and raised educational standards overall.

The party claims the number of maintained secondary schools has dropped by 344 since Labour came to power in 1997.

Posted by Theo Foulds

Published On 10/03/2010