The Conservatives have fleshed out a radical set of education funding policies yesterday including plans to allow parents to start their own schools.

Shadow education secretary Damian Green told the NASUWT conference that under a Conservative government parents could also put money that would have been spent on their child's state education towards private schooling.

Forum Response: Association of Teachers and Lecturers

Gwen Evans, joint acting general secretary, told ePolitix.com: "The Conservatives have a problem: how to come up with convincing innovation in a system which is soggy with change.

"The last thing thinking parents will want to hear about is a party which will destabilise an education system that is already struggling to cope.

"And they will remember that but for their ill-fated nursery vouchers we would still have a really flourishing playgroups movement. The power parents and young people want is the power to access good quality education wherever they are in the United Kingdom.

"It is time for the Tory party to file for divorce from their unhappy relationship with voucher driven policies."

Responding to Gwen Evans comments, Damian Green told ePolitix.com: "All our policies are designed to offer excellence to all parents, when the current system too often fails children whose family background is disadvantaged.

"I am surprised that the ATL wants to stick with a system where a quarter of 11-year-olds leave primary school unable to read, write and count properly, and where 30,000 children a year leave school without a single qualification."