David Miliband, Minister for School Standards, Department of Education and Skills.

---

Dear Crispin,

Thank you for your letter of 8 January to the Secretary of State enclosing an article about school funding. I am replying as I have ministerial responsibility for this area of policy.

I was interested to read your article and the contrasting views of your constituents. Let me be clear that we have no plans to introduce vouchers for school education, largely for the reasons which a number of your constituents mention, but also for the deadweight costs which would be involved.

As your constituents have noted, under the current system each pupil attracts the same Age Weighted Pupil Unit whatever school they attend within their local area. Vouchers would not improve access to oversubscribed schools. Instead, while we want to take measures to allow popular schools to expand, we also want to raise standards in all schools so that even more parents are able to send their children to high quality schools. Vouchers only stoke up the demand for places at particular schools, without doing anything to tackle the underlying issues about the supply of high quality provision. That is why we are committed to improving state schools across the board.

David Miliband