It’s a rare and glorious day for British democracy when an MP comes out, not just in direction opposition to the position taken by his party, but proposes the exact opposite action altogether.  As Gordon Brown has announced the extension of compulsory education to 18, starting in 2013, that’s the exact position that Frank Field finds himself in.

Field, Labour MP for Birkenhead and former Minister of State in the Department of Social Security, has urged the government to reduce the age of the end of compulsory education to 14.  If the pupil’s parents wanted them to continue, he or she could.  But, for a pupil to qualify for this early leaving age, he or she would have to pass the equivalent of the standard Key Stage 3 tests in Maths, English, and Science: showing a basic literary, numeracy, and proficiency in each of these subjects.

In conjunction with this, the government could concentrate their pre-14 education on getting these basics right, making sure that everyone is literate and numerate at the age of 14, and making sure that nobody falls through the cracks.  This would allow people to leave education with the foundations upon which to build a career, whilst also giving them two extra years to see if their vocation is for them.

At the same time, the government could save the £11.8bn that he estimates is wasted educating people that don’t reach those basic levels.  That money could be used to fund school vouchers, scholarships for those early school-leavers to return to education later, or returned to the taxpayer from whom it came.

This is an encouraging move towards liberalising what is a very draconian and inefficient one-size-fits-all education system, and moving towards personal choice as the arbiter of a person’s education.

By this system, basic education is improved, making sure that everyone gets a level of literacy required to understand one’s legal and moral rights and participate in society.  Those people not suited to academic education get to work for two years, build up vocational experience, and contribute to, rather than take out of, the taxpayers’ pocket.

That Frank Field is the great promoter of the policy is unsurprising, given his track record.  He has displayed an unwavering belief, derived from his staunch Christianity, in the power of self-improvement and opportunity.  Because of this, and despite representing a very working class constituency, he has actively campaigned in favour of ending the welfare state.

If we want to allow people opportunities, our government has to realise that people can make the vast majority of decisions - even pertaining to the holy cows of education or health - for themselves, and for their families.  Only they can know what’s best for them.  What we all know, though, is that this system benefits nooone: letting down the underachieving children, letting down those that are saddled teaching or learning alongside them, and letting down the taxpayer.

To adopt Brown’s way of thinking, and extending this failure of a system to all those aged under 18, is madness.  To adopt Field’s way of thinking, and removing people from that trap, is common sense.

In over 15 years in state education in this country, I’ve encountered enough bad teachers to know they don’t deserve the time of day. In fact, I was suspended from secondary school for having the temerity to suggest that one be given her P45. That’s the sort of gratitude I get for saving them all that money on HR consultancy fees…

And so it’s nice to hear that the government is finally taking my advice and kicking out the lazy socialist bums that congregate in the nation’s school staff rooms. Well, at least an adviser is now advising the same. Sir Cyril Taylor, chair of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, has said:

We’ve got 400,000 of our children attending low-attaining schools; 75,000 leave schools at 16 with hardly any qualifications at all; five million adults are functionally illiterate. That’s a serious problem.

Clearly. I don’t think it’s that major a problem that people leave school without being able to analyse Shakespeare’s sonnets, but reading is slightly more important.

The head teacher that is good can take the necessary action; you get the wrong people off the bus and get the right people on the bus in the right seats.

Get off the bus and on your bike? I likesies. But the lefties are, quite predictably, angry. After all, the fewer socialist bums there are picking up taxpayers’ money, the… fewer socialist bums there are picking up taxpayers’ money. Good old self-interest.

But the main point of ROFLMAOing as far has to be the head of the NUT, John Bangs, who said:

I cannot understand where he’s got those figures from. We have the best teaching force we’ve had for years and years.

If anyone in the country thinks state sector teachers are better today than they were a generation ago - achieving worse standardised results with vastly more money and better technology - they’re kidding themselves. If anyone overseas looks over at the UK and envies our teachers - who can’t control a class or teach the most docile of grammar school students - they have similarly poor judgment.

The fact is that the introduction of a stick by which to beat bad teachers around the head can only be a good thing. A carrot, in the form of truly performance-related pay, would be a nice addition, but striking the fear of God into teachers with a massive stick with spikes in sounds like more fun.

For, you see, children, that’s called incentivisation. It’s what makes the free market so damn good: rewarding productivity and success and not rewarding inefficiency and failure. I know, the lefties will tear this policy apart with their fearsome argument of reductio ad capitalisum. But it’s true, and the opposite system, of teachers being rewarded for failing to teach 16-year olds to read, sounds a trifle absurd.

So, there you go. Unions prefer state schools remaining inefficient bastions of tenured teachers, depressing teaching quality and hindering the advancement of those pupils that the state forces to attend such inferior schools that they see fit for the taxpayer to fund. Sadly, unlike his heroine Baroness Thatcher, Gordon Brown hasn’t got the best track record of standing up to public sector trade unions, so you can bet your bottom dollar that he’ll pay no attention whatsoever to Sir Cyril. The result can only be 17,000 useless teachers, and 400,000 betrayed pupils.

This last week saw the announcement that the independent Birkenhead High School is set to be taken over by the government, becoming a city academy. The school is the third independent school to become a city academy, after schools in Toxteth and Manchester, and marks another step in the United Kingdom’s concerted drive towards mediocrity.

Birkenhead is currently run by the Girls’ Day School Trust (GDST), which in charge of 26 all-girls schools in England and Wales. The GDST has found many of its schools under increasing pressure from government, with the state taxing those parents that would sent their children to independent schools more to sink yet more money into our failing state schools.

Given this, it can come as no surprise that the two schools that the GDST has handed over to the government are in poorer areas of the northwest - Birkenhead and Toxteth - while the two schools that they are adding are in wealthier areas of the southeast - Kensington and Tonbridge.

By pursuing their strategy of pressuring independent schools, the people that suffer aren’t the fabulously wealthy, who can afford to pay the spiralling school fees of the major public schools, but the aspirational class that was so feted at the Conservative Party conference. Forcing independent schools in poorer neighbourhoods out of business severely limits the opportunities that children from traditionally-poorer backgrounds have: compounded by the extinction of grammar schools in most areas.

This truth, and others, are lost entirely on the so-called ‘analyst’ on the BBC website, who parades his opinion like nobody’s business.

Have they rediscovered their social conscience or are they just finding new ways to survive in cash-strapped times?

The GDST is a not-for-profit charity. It’s a charitable school. It is much the epitome of a social conscience. The government, particularly this one, is the epitome of a thief.

As it happened the independent schools had little to fear. Far from being savaged, they have been gently seduced.

Gently seduced? They’re having their charitable status revoked, and that’s not savagery? It’s either greater tax revenue or more kids getting a good education, Gordon. Make your choice.

And, of course, the origins of many of today’s top fee-charging schools were rooted in very similar charitable aims. Sometimes those origins seem to have been forgotten.

Forgotten by whom? The BBC? Schools minister Ed Balls? Fellow ex-public schoolboy Lord Adonis? Certainly not the GDST, which remains a non-profit charity, as it always has been.

That is a big difference. It might just help to break the very common misconception that, somehow, educational excellence is something that can only be achieved by financial and academic selection.

Money and ability aren’t important, eh? OK, then walk the walk. Go to a comprehensive school in Birkenhead, down the road from Birkenhead High School, and try to find a kid whose full potential is being realised. Heck, find a pupil that isn’t perpetually under the threat of gun or knife violence in the playground. If you can’t, shut up.

If some of them are now willing to educate all in their local community, irrespective of ability or financial means, then that does look like the start of a revolution. Could it be the beginning of the end for England’s divided school system, which remains one of the most hierarchical in the world?

Perhaps so, but also the beginning of the end for England’s superb public school system, which remains by far the most admired and copied in the world. This ‘revolution’ is not a benign one, but the death of a sort of school that provides hope for children from a certain neighbourhood, and freedom from the low standards and violence that pervades the state sector.

If the government wants to blur the lines between the state and independent schools, whilst maintaining educational standards, there’s a very easy way to achieve that, and that’s by introducing a voucher system. The government would hand out to each parent education vouchers, worth the amount the state spends on schooling, and allow parents to shop around for the best education: with the chance to top up the vouchers with their own money if they choose.

Instead of making it impossible for the poor to go to good schools, it would allow them to choose which school to attend. Instead of having a definite line between the bad state schools and the good independent schools, there would be none at all: the hierarchy would disappear in one fell swoop.

I still don’t think the voucher system is a fantastic way to run an education system (if Eton gets the best results in the country, let all schools be like Eton and privatise them). However, the principled political pragmatist sees the voucher system as a perfectly adequate solution: empowering parents to make choices based on their circumstances, and encouraging schools to improve standards to match those of the existing independent schools.

The alternative is the death of our independent sector by stealth, by the usurpation of their heritage and contribution to communities by the state, and by the statist agenda of the likes of the BBC. That would be a disaster, not the rich that the crusading left want to eat alive, but for the working class that the same supposedly want to help.