In this article the author argues that an incoming government should establish a new values base for educational policy focused on the well-being and educational entitlement of all children rather than the education market. A new government must prioritise learning and teaching: rather than pursuing an ideological agenda and attempting to control how teachers teach, it should respect the knowledge and expertise of educational professionals. The author illustrates how the instrumentalism of free market ideology carries pedagogical assumptions that are inappropriate and detrimental to children and their learning. Government's role, she suggests, should be to provide the right conditions for the development of education: the alleviation of poverty; the provision of equality of opportunity for all; and respect for the agency, voices and knowledge of the professional and wider communities, including children.