By Sean Coughlan
BBC News education reporter |
 Tim Collins says school discipline is a vote winner on the doorsteps |
The publicity budget for government education policy should be scrapped and given to schools to produce their own newspapers, say the Conservatives. Shadow Education Secretary Tim Collins wants state schools to take control of budgets and admission policy.
Slimming down central government would include devolving publicity budgets to schools.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats accuse the Tories of wanting to cut public services.
The Conservatives are stressing the need for classroom discipline as one of their key campaign pledges.
'Right to choose'
But they are also offering far greater autonomy to schools and giving parents a "right to choose" over school places.
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Giving individual schools a share of the education publicity budget was a practical example of how centralised control could be dismantled, said Mr Collins.
"Instead of having a vast publicity budget which is all about ministers in Whitehall patting themselves on the back, the schools will have the money to provide a tabloid newspaper to every home in their area," said Mr Collins.
These newspapers, produced three times a year, would allow schools to show the local community what they were achieving, including the creative work not recorded in the exam league tables, he said.
The Conservatives want to end the "state monopoly" in education, allowing all schools a self-governing status, removed from local authority control, and introducing a wider range of new providers into the state system.
This could include schools set up by faith groups, private business, charities or by groups of parents.
Parents choosing these schools could use public funds to pay for a place � as long as it was no more than the amount spent on an equivalent place in a state school.
Voucher confusion
Although public funding will be available for places in these privately-run schools, there will not be any "voucher" given to parents, as the party's research showed that people found a voucher system too confusing.
"We're not re-creating the assisted places scheme, we're not in the business of subsidising the super wealthy who can afford to send their children to expensive private schools," he said.
This would be extending the type of choice already enjoyed by the wealthy, he said.
"How can it be right that choice is only for a minority who can afford the more expensive homes in the catchment area of the good school?"
In terms of voter appeal, Mr Collins said that the party's emphasis on improving classroom behaviour was proving popular on the doorsteps.
"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," he says.
The plans on improving discipline involve setting up a network of "turn around" schools for badly-behaved pupils and giving head teachers' the final control over exclusions � and stopping appeal panels from over-ruling heads.
"It's a pretty clear policy, popular with teachers and parents. More to the point, it's actually likely to work, because the absolute essential prerequisite for everything else is that you have a disciplined, controlled learning environment.
"That's the leading edge of our education policy. But for parents, there's also the idea of more choice and more power. For teachers, there's greater professional freedom. And we'll get more money to the front line."
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How can it be right that choice is only for a minority who can afford the more expensive homes in the catchment area of the good school?
Peter Snow analysis 