They facilitate other's strategic actions, too, by providing a balance of direction and autonomy, of learning from actions and rewarding appropriate risk-taking.
When students are growing antsy at their desks and need to get some physical exercise to let off some steam and reboot for more learning, they have the autonomy to go to the gym and work out.
Professor Patricia Broadfoot, a former Professor of Education and now vice-chancellor of the University of Gloucestershire, argued persuasively that the evidence from international studies showed that "the highest quality teaching and learning comes when we have the greatest autonomy for the teacher and the learner".
Not only does it replace actual learning with crude competition and distort incentives, it hinders all sorts of other reforms such as creating real autonomy for teachers or giving families actual choices.