Thanks for that response, Katherine. I think that two of the elements you cite - individualised learning and asessment, and the teacher autonomy to allow that - are fundamentals that I would demand of any fit-for-purpose educational system.

We opted to take our children out of the state sector here in Spain precisely because ir resolutely failed to mmet those criteria.

But making the shift is a very scary (perhaps impossibly so) choice for a national government, without a massive cultural change coming first in terms of what society expects of education, I think.