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Thursday 4 December 2008

Lessons for less: affordable excellence

Neil Collins commends the business plan, and theeducational ethos, of the New Model School Company

Whatever attracts the parents, it’s not a shiny new building. Hidden behind a small door at the side of a church, underneath, ironically enough, a School of Knowledge (not a religious cult, but where taxi drivers learn London’s road map), it’s easy to miss. Go up some steep stairs into the hall, and the enthusiasm hits you. Sarah Knollys, the headmistress, has a small, passionately committed team of young women working for her, for less than they would get in a state school.

Most private schools pay at least on the state scale, so it’s a measure of just how desperate some teachers are about the condition of London’s primary schools. They like the ability to teach rather than simply to try and keep order, as well as the freedom from the constant drizzle of paper falling on them from the Department for Children, Schools and Families. They want to teach, not to take dictation.

Teachers as well as parents are queuing up to get in, and Whelan argues that this shows his business model works. In its latest financial year, the school was just £8,000 short of break-even. Next year’s fees will rise by 2.5 per cent, but they will still be below the £5,000 mark. The NMS now has a chairman, Justin Shaw, and a business plan to create more Maple Walks.

The key to the plan is that the schools are not expected to repay their capital costs. An educational charity has bought a £1.25 million site in the neighbouring borough of Brent, and benefactors are being sought to put up as much again to build the school a permanent home. These benefactors, if they can be found, lock in their capital (unsecured) but Shaw expects to pay them a maximum 5 per cent return on their contributions, along the lines pioneered over a century ago by the Peabody Trust. More commercial fundraising avenues are also being explored.

Compared to the much-trumpeted and highly politicised academies, which seem to need tens of millions of pounds merely to get to opening day, the NMS’s sums are tiny: £2.5 million for the site and buildings, £150,000 (repayable) in start-up costs and a few tens of thousands for equipment. All this for a primary-school education costing less than £100 a week, and producing children who are at least a year ahead of the state’s yardsticks. Why isn’t everyone doing it?

More articles from: Neil Collins | this section

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