Alan Ryan, the Warden of New College, has advocated the abolition of state school education. Writing in the TLS last week, Ryan criticised the organisational bureaucracy inherent in today's education system, saying that "no interesting advance in twentieth century education began in state schools."
In his review of Adam Swift's book How not to be a hypocrite, in which Swift recommends that private education be made illegal on grounds of equality, Ryan rejects Swift's opinions, and instead describes a world in which state schools did not exist. He says that if we "get the state off teachers' backs, they will teach better and more interestingly," and that it would produce "experiment, variety, and the chance of real progress".
The comments have been received with disbelief by those who have dedicated their lives to state education. Mrs Pat Norman, Community manager at the Oxford Community School, told the OxStu that state-provided education was "a human right", and that "we must have national standards to which schools conform. A system where every school could decide its own agenda would complicate things for pupils and their parents".