Halleluyah! There's a post on Harry's Place making the progressive case for school vouchers. And quite right, too.
I've been banging on about this since 1995, when I was Research Director of the Fabian Society. I couldn't understand why it was regarded as right-wing to want to give all parents the ability to choose their children's education. Better-off parents can write out a cheque to a private school. Surely the progressive approach is to give that power to all parents.(Now, of course, I realise that the idea that the left is somehow, by definition, more progressive than the right is simply risible. George Osborne is bang on.)
What happens now is that those who
are well-off have the choice to school their children wherever they'd
like, and they can afford to pay twice - once through taxes and once
through tuition. Most of the population is not in that position. The
vouchers would allow the lower classes to have nearly the same
opportunity as the upper classes. So it would tend to reduce the
difference between the rich and the poor. The only reason it has been
argued the other way is . . . well, I don't know.
Well, so taboo were vouchers then that I was sacked for proposing the idea, and the Fabians refused to publish my paper (which was then rescued by a certain Daniel Finkelstein at the Social Market Foundation). But I've been committed to the idea ever since (here's a piece I wrote in 2001; I reckon I've written something close to two dozen op-eds on the subject so far), and believe they would be the single most transformative policy that any government could introduce. There is, I'd argue. no other single change in any area of life that would have a greater beneficial effect on the country.
