Choice of School; Choice of Hospital -- the penny drops! But is it efficient?

Question

I thought choice in these things was stupid -- everyone wants a good local school and good local medical facilites -- noone should ever need to chose to go further away!

Then I realised having the right to choose is good, because every time someone chooses to go elsewhere it is an instant and effecive indication that the local facilites are failing.

So once choice is in place, the less it is used the better things must be!

A lot of money is being spent on systems, that (hopefully) will rarely be used -- but without the systems any problems could well be hidden.

Is this an efficient way of ensuring local standards - if not, then what would be better?

Answer 1

Involvement by the user and staff, quality standards that are enforced.

Administrators that are paid by results

An ombudsman to resolve issues