The proposition you are about to read represents my ideas. They are not official Conservative Party policy which with the "Better Schools' Passports" do not transfer into the private sector as I would wish. Your comments on their merits will help me develop my thoughts by seeing how well these ideas stand up to your examination.

We've grown up with the idea that the Government will provide free schooling for all, in schools that are to all intents and purposes paid for by the Government. Teachers are employed by the State, paid by the State on contracts set by the State. They teach a curriculum laid down by the State on a budget decided by the State. Education is one of the key political battlegrounds. However of those who can afford it, many, about 5% in the country as a whole, and up to 25% in Surrey, choose to extract themselves at huge expense and pay for the provision of education for their children privately.

The achievements of the private education sector appear to far outstrip the public sector. The result is an educational and, to a degree, social apartheid. We have become so dissatisfied with the results of the public sector that universities are now being expected to skew their entrance criteria in favour of those who haven't had the opportunities of a private education.

At the tertiary level a Labour Government and the universities are now arguing for tuition fees as the only way to provide more money for university education, saying it is only fair to expect those who benefit from the education to have to pay for it. But whilst the current education debate is focused on university tuition fees I think we should be asking some fundamental questions about primary and secondary education.

There are two central issues we should address. Who pays for the education of our children and who provides it? I believe in the 21st century it is not the best solution to have the State both paying for and providing education.

Something is wrong. There is general agreement that education is very important. It is so important in the view of some parents that they will pay twice to achieve the best for their children, first through taxation and secondly through full private fees. But for most parents that is simply not an option. Suppose though it was an option for most parents. That most parents were able to make a choice about how much they valued education by deciding by how much they were prepared to top up the funds the State provides for education.

A few people may place no value on education and only send their children to school because they have to by law. They will be a small group who would not spend any of their own income on education. They explain why the State will always provide funds for education because there is near universal agreement that every child should have the opportunity of education regardless of the attitude of their parents. There is also a group who, although they value education, are not in a position to contribute significantly more, because they do not have spare disposable income to do so. Over 100 years ago when schooling was made compulsory this group was probably a majority; but in 21st century Britain this group is a minority and should continue to decline as the nation's overall wealth increases and more people have savings and income they can control.

Is it right in a society where most people have the ability to make choices about how they spend their money that we deny that majority the ability to choose how much they spend on educating their children? Is it right that to make this choice you must pay twice, first through taxation and then full private fees, the result being that only a small minority are able to exercise this choice.

If you are a teacher or otherwise professionally involved in education the benefit of enabling all these people to make a choice is that much, much more money is devoted to education as a whole. The result will be that teachers will be paid more, will have greater status in society and there will be more competition to become teachers. The standard of teaching will rise as will the standard of living of teachers. The importance of education to society will be reflected by the private decisions of all of us, underwritten by the decision of government, not be solely the preserve of government deciding the priority that education should have set against health, defence, police etc and overall levels of taxation.

The mechanism to deliver this choice is vouchers. If a parent wants to make a private choice about where to educate their children they will be able to cash a voucher up to the value that the State would pay for a child's education and add to it as much as they wished. Then they could choose their school. The school could be private, charitable, church or State. It should be up to all schools to decide how they organise themselves. They could decide policies on selection, streaming and priorities for the style of education they deliver.

This would apply to special schools as much as to mainstream schools. Some children with particularly challenging learning difficulties already receive teaching in private schools paid for by the state. For these children the vouchers would plainly have a higher value reflecting the existing higher cost of educating and caring for these children. This lack of choice is currently a harrowing one for many parents I see of children requiring special needs education. They see an ideal private school, but have to hope that the hard pressed education authority will pay all the high costs of specialist education and care. Often they can't and less than optimum provision is all that can be offered. If public provision can be combined with the private funding that can be sustained by the parents then many more of these children would receive the specialist care in the institutions of the parents' choice.

If a scheme is structured well every time a parent exercised the right to cash a voucher it would leave more money for the State to spend on the children of those who can't or won't make that choice.

In the 21st century this is surely a better way of proceeding than expecting the State to make all the key decisions. It does mean that parents will have to exercise even greater responsibility, but it should mean that the great public good of education is supported by the private choice of the many not the few.