Owing to a widespread attack of pathetic fallacy, tomorrow's weather will be determined by the collective mood of the populace. So please cheer up, you miserable buggers.
Yes, I know the authorities don't like it but I still like to carry a cane with me. I even have ball-gags and handcuffs for when I do the public schools.
My belief is that the free market is a self-controlling mechanism that can be applied to education as much as to anything else. You advertise lessons, teachers compete to get a share of the student market and students use their purchasing power either to get into the lessons they like, or to skip classes and spend the cash at the chippie instead, in the full awareness of the future impact this will have on their earning power in the job market. It works very efficiently, and it drives up results because the students are incentivised to remain committed to the course of study they have paid for, since there are no second chances, while the students who would fail are less likely to enrol in the first place.