Watford is home to many wonderful schools but the problem remains that there just aren’t enough good school places for all children that apply. A Conservative government would bust open the state monopoly on free education, extending the Academy Schools scheme, giving local parents, organisations and companies a control over schools and the education provided to local children. This would mean a greater choice for parents and pupils to find a school that is best suited to their needs. We can no longer tolerate what have now become known as ‘sink schools’. One sink school is one too many in my books.

A Conservative government would also like to see a return to more traditional teaching methods. In the past 12 years we have seen our children’s education jeopardised by experiments in the latest fashionable nonsense to come from so-called education experts.

I also support Conservative plans to redress the balance in the classroom and shift power back to the teacher. Without discipline in the classroom, teachers cannot teach and pupils cannot learn. As such we should be protecting the teachers, not the trouble-makers.

Conservatives draft manifesto on education and schools

You can read our draft manifesto on schools in full using the document reader below, or alternatively click here to download a copy in PDF format.