IF EVER there was a broken Tory promise it was that which pledged less centralised government.

But as councils are increasingly emasculated through state capping, as the NHS has lost virtually all accountability to the community and as quangos have sprung up to control so many other services, it is plain that the devolution of power to local level holds little interest for the government.

And now, it seems, they are seeking to claw education into the quango culture and, in effect, nationalise it.

It would be another nail in the coffin of local democracy and, perhaps, deliver a serious blow to education standards.

For ministers are considering a plan by the Funding Agency for Schools, the body set up to finance the grant-maintained schools which opt out of local authority control, to take over all school spending.

This would, at a stroke, centralise the control of education and hand it to a quango body doing the government's bidding, not that of the local community.

The affront to local democracy is one thing; its impact on it is quite another.

For, bereft of supervision of education, the role of county councils and unitary authorities would be reduced to virtual sideshows. And representation of local interests and demands would suffer accordingly. Not only that, schools, many already desperately short of money, might become even more hard up.

That is because behind this power grab, there is the notion of a national funding formula for schools that might pay schools the same amount for all pupils no matter where they live.

Such a step would, of course, deprive many schools with special needs of the extra funding they need - something that a local authority, closer to the scene, might easily recognise.

Additionally, since councils already spend nearly £700million on education than the government believes they should, the instant, predictable effect of schools funding being handed to a slav????ish government-appo?inted body would be devastating cuts; the stuff of teacher job losses and soaring class sizes.

?Furthermore, though local authorities may have played political football with education, there is little evidence that parents want them to lose control of it.

The small-scale uptake of parent-led opt-outs of schools is proof of that.

And for all its faults, a local government-run education service is at least one that is much more answerable to the community's complaints and its votes than is a remote quango.

This move is not wanted, not needed and is full of danger for schools and democracy.

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