§ Mr. Couchmanasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will make a further statement about education vouchers.
§ Sir Keith JosephI was intellectually attracted to the idea of education vouchers because it seemed to offer the possibility of some kind of market mechanism which would increase the choice and diversity of schools in response to the wishes of parents acting as customers. In the course of my examination of this possibility, it became clear that there would be great practical difficulties in making any voucher system compatible with the requirements that schooling should be available to all without charge, compulsory and of an acceptable standard. These requirements—difficult though the latter two are to achieve effectively under any dispensation—were seen to limit substantially the operation, and the benefits, of free market choices; and to entail an involvement on the part of the state—centrally and locally—which would be both financial and regulatory and on a scale likely to necessitate an administrative effort as great as under the present system. These factors would have applied whether vouchers were available only within the maintained system or could be used in the independent sector as well.
A change of this magnitude would desirably be preceded by pilot schemes undertaken by volunteer LEAs. These would require legislation and there was serious doubt whether they could adequately establish the feasibility of a voucher system within a manageable time scale.
I concluded that the difficulties which would arise from the many and complex changes required to the legal and institutional framework of the education system, and the additional cost of mitigating them, were too great to justify further consideration of a voucher system, as a means of increasing parental choice and influence.
For these reasons, the idea of vouchers is no longer on the agenda.