The Scottish Conservatives have set out plans for radical change in education.  At a press conference in Edinburgh Liz Smith, Shadow Schools Minister, laid out radical plans to break the state monopoly over education provision; to give more control to teachers and more choice to parents.

In her speech, Liz Smith said:

"The current situation is just not acceptable. It is not acceptable to parents, to teachers or to pupils, all of whom know we should be doing very much better. The Scottish Conservatives believe it is time for radical change.

"If we want standards to go up, we must break the current monopoly the state has over the provision of education, give teachers more control and give parents more choice. We need to take power away from the politicians and start trusting teachers and head-teachers. This can be achieved by allowing the direct state funding of new independently run free schools which can compete with the existing local authority run schools." Click http://www.scottishconservatives.com/news/speeches/287 for the full speech.