By Sean Coughlan
BBC News education reporter |
 Tim Collins says the "state monopoly" controlling education must end |
School discipline is the education issue where the Conservatives expect to reap the greatest electoral reward. Tim Collins, the party's education spokesman, says that it's getting an "instant reaction" on the doorsteps.
Dove-tailing neatly with the party's promises over law and order, the message on getting tough in the classroom goes down well with voters who are anxious about badly-behaved youngsters.
"It gets a very strong response. There's an instant reaction that it's an important issue that is not being handled satisfactorily. And they think instinctively that the Conservatives would be more likely to get a grip on that than other parties," says Mr Collins.
Persistent poor behaviour would lead to pupils being taken out of mainstream schools and put into a "turn around" school - helping to rectify the behaviour problem and giving a chance to the rest of the class to get on with learning.
This is intended to help to tackle violence and aggressive behaviour in schools - and to reinforce teachers who have often complained of lacking sufficient backing.
'Benefit of the doubt'
"We will make it very clear to teachers and to head teachers that they will have the benefit of the doubt - and the system will be designed to back their judgement, rather than others involved such as parents or children," he says.
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Head teachers will be given the final say on which pupils are allowed in the school - ending the right of appeals panels to overturn exclusions.
"Appeals panels have produced some horrendous and utterly unjustifiable decisions, where even pupils who have used violence have been forced back into the school," he says.
There have been accusations that this will lead to a flood of legal action - with parents using the courts where appeals panels have been withdrawn and their children have been consigned to these special units.
Mr Collins rejects this as "a bit of a red herring. If you look at independent schools, which don't have appeals panels, there are very few cases where parents take legal action".
And he says that the Conservatives are also planning to "make it a very, very difficult thing to sue a school" - in a bid to get rid of the litigation culture that has worried teachers.
When there's an accident in the playground, "we should be reaching for the plaster and not the number of a solicitor".
Student debt
Along with discipline, the Conservatives will be hoping to gain votes from their proposal to scrap tuition fees - replacing the funding with higher charges on student loans.
And Mr Collins attacks the government's target for 50% of young people to go to university - which he says is "pulling the wool over people's eyes".
From getting rid of selection at the age of 11, he says it now seems the government was trying to get rid of academic selection for people going to university.
"Pumping out graduates for the sake of pumping out graduates does not create economic prosperity," he says - and the expansion in places will leave young people "saddled under the weight of a huge amount of debt".
But behind these headline-grabbers, there is a much more profound ideological change on offer.
The Conservatives are proposing a far-reaching shake-up of the state school system - giving individual schools control over issues such as admissions and budgets, and introducing a raft of schools from new providers, including the private sector.
Mr Collins suggests that even though this might be derided now as "wicked and evil capitalism by top-hatted Tories", there is an historical inevitability about the shift towards greater flexibility in the education market.
Just as nationalised, centrally-planned economies had been rejected, so too the education sector would have to become more responsive to what parents wanted - and accept that state funds could be used to pay for private places.
This could be in schools set up by private firms, but it could also be in schools created by faith groups, charitable organisations or parents. As an example, he says that parent sending their children to low-fee independent Islamic and Christian schools could receive state funding.
And he says that this will be a benefit for the poorest rather than the articulate and well-off who can already work the system to their advantage.
'Worst in Europe'
"It's often said that the Tories on education are only about the people who are privileged. But the present system, which is supposed to be about generating equality does not.
 The Conservatives say parents should have more choice in school places |
"We have the most unequal educational system anywhere in Europe. The present system is one which entrenches privilege - the state schools that do best are in middle class areas with very expensive homes, and the worst performing schools are in the inner cities where people are the most deprived.
"If you are deprived, disadvantaged, socially excluded in Britain, you are given no choice about your school and you are given the worst state schools, not just in the country, but in the whole of Europe."
But the mechanism for giving parents the right to use state funds for private places will not be known as a "voucher" or the "pupil passport".
There will be an amount of money available, equivalent to the cost of a state place, but there will not be any piece of paper given to parents. Instead the money will follow the pupil - as it does in the state sector at present.
"We've not used the word 'voucher' or 'passport' � and to be entirely candid, we've done research on what people think of particular concepts and it showed that people thought that vouchers were about lunch and that passports were about sending your children abroad," says Mr Collins.
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If you are deprived, disadvantaged, socially excluded in Britain, you are given no choice about your school and you are given the worst state schools, not just in the country, but in the whole of Europe
Peter Snow analysis 
