Status Anxiety

15 August 2009

I am not standing for parliament after all. But I still want to set up a new school

Given that the Conservatives aren’t going to budge on the issue of admission by academic selection, trying to set up a version of Marr College seems like my best bet. However, the Tories do need to be a little more flexible in another area — they need to allow free schools to be run for profit. At present, the policy is to allow only non-profit-making bodies to start free schools. There are two reasons why this won’t work. First, if you exclude private companies, it is unlikely that enough free schools will be set up in the Conservatives’ first term for their education policy to be judged a success and embraced by all political parties. Given that the Tories may not be re-elected, the only way to safeguard those free schools that have been started is if enough have been set up to make it politically impossible for their successors to reverse the policy. That’s exactly what happened in Sweden after the policy was introduced by a conservative administration in 1992, but only because the Swedish government made it possible for free schools to be run for profit. Today, the largest free school chain in Sweden, Kunskapsskolan, runs 30 schools, employs 700 staff and teaches nearly 10,000 pupils.

Second, without the involvement of the private sector the cost of setting up free schools will have to be met by the government and that makes it probable that the Tories will either water down the policy or abandon it altogether once they’re in office. Take the school I want to set up. The start-up costs will be considerable, given that I will have to acquire a suitable site, convert it for school use and then hire a full complement of staff. My plan is to admit 300 pupils in total, but I’ll only be able to fill the school at the rate of one class a year which means it will run at a loss for at least the first five years of its existence. Who’s going to pay for all that? The Department of Education? If the Tories don’t allow existing private school providers like Gems and Cognita — and, indeed, Kunskapsskolan — to form partnerships with people like me, I can’t see an alternative.

No doubt allowing companies to run free schools for profit will open the Conservatives up to the charge of wanting to ‘privatise’ state education. But I believe that’s an argument they can win — and without allowing private sector involvement the policy cannot succeed.

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cogitata

August 13th, 2009 11:57am Report this comment

Why does it have to be a profit making business? Why not a community interest company? Or charitable incorporated organisation? Or is it just a sad fact that a private company or people with money that could help you simply won't do it unless there's something financial in it for them?

Toby Young

August 13th, 2009 1:22pm Report this comment

It's certainly possible that not-for-profit organisations will help out -- and, indeed, I'm going to approach various local independent schools and try and enlist their support. But raising money for a for-profit venture is always going to be easier than raising money for a not--for-profit venture -- that's human nature, I'm afraid. (Civitas runs Maple Walk on a for-profit basis, though dividends to shareholders are capped and a fixed percentage of the profits are ploughed back into the school. That sounds like a good model.)

The other problem with setting up a not-for-profit "free school" is that, however successful it is, it's only likely to be a one off. If it's for-profit, by contrast, success will fuel expansion -- which is exactly what's happened in Sweden.

Ben Franklin

August 17th, 2009 2:14am Report this comment

Banning selective entry from schools should not be a problem - provided that they apply rigorous streaming, and that they are big enough. But how big? Consider the teaching of mathematics. The only maths that the overwhelming majority of the population needs is competence in add, subtract, multiply and divide, with a basic understanding of fractions and percentages, and with perhaps a little algebra. Teaching the subject to this level does not need maths graduates - in fact it would be better done by those not good at the subject because they would be better able to relate to the difficulties that non-mathematical children have. However, for children destined to become mathemticians or engineers, it is important that they are introduced to topics such as trigonometry, calculus, etc. as early as possible, because the brain's ability to absorb abstract concepts is at its peak during adolescence. Obviously you cannot decide a child's future at 11 or 12, so those selected for an advanced maths course should include all who show any potential in this direction at all - perhaps 5% of the population. These children would need to be tought by good maths graduates having the humility to be able to recognise a child potentialy better than themselves. A maths department would hardly be viable with fewer than 3 teachers, and if you assume that each gives 20 lessons a week, and that the children receive 6 lessons a week in sensible-sized classes, say 30 children, this implies that the school should have at least 300 children doing advanced maths, or a total roll of at least 6000 children, preferably more (if my maths is correct!). Such a school might in theory deliver education efficiently, but it would be a soulless monstrosity. It would need to be divided into at least six units (we mustn't call them schools!) each catering for a different level of academic ability, each with a separate campus, but with the ability to transfer children between them from time to time if it becomes apparent that they have been incorrectly graded.

When I was investigating comprehensive education for my own children, I could see that the special needs of non-academic children were catered for well, but the needs of gifted children were all but ignored. They were either treated as freaks by being taken out of classes for special tuition, or punished for being clever by being given extra lessons. I believe that each child should be tought in an environment of equals, so that he/she has the potential to be top of the class with hard work, or bottom with skiving. Only rigorous streaming can make this possible. 'Setting' is not the answer. This was a sop offered to the traditionalists when it became obvious that mixed-ability teaching was a disaster. One of its drawbacks is that you have hundreds of children milling around in between each period, instead of just a few teachers going from one class to another. It also militates against the esprit de corps which develops among class of 30 children being tought together. The mixed-ability nonsense which started in the 60's was evil, and it didn't fool the children. The non-academic may not be clever, but they are not stupid. They know when they are being patronised, even if they can't spell the word.

Class size, and the importance of keeping it low, has been much exagerated. In my 11+ year (1951-2), our teacher coped well with more than 50 of us. It worked, because our primary school was streamed. The failure of the 11+ was not that once in a while a child went to a grammar school when he or she would have been better placed in a secondary modern, (we children knew which of us would go to grammars and which to sec. mods., and our teachers certainly knew, and there were no surprises). the failure was that it was seen in terms of pass and fail, rather than as a means of ensuring that each child's education matched his ability - this, I believe, was Butler's intention in the 1944 act. Every child has the potential to be above average at something, and the ideal school would provide the opportunity for this potential to be realised.

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