Why The Free School Won’t Work
Although I have a great deal of sympathy for parents wanting a good state education for their children I really don’t think the West London Free School is the answer. I have not read any compelling arguments in favour of the Free School. It is founded by a bunch of dilettantes with no significant experience of education management and several of whom, including Toby Young, are ideologically opposed to LEA managed comprehensive education. Do not be fooled by his edited ramblings on this forum. He gives his true opinion on Acton High and its ‘isms’ in the education press. Whilst the arguments in favour of free schools are political and ideological, the arguments against them are practical and utilitarian. The Free School has not yet decided on an admissions criteria. If they have a chronological waiting list it will discriminate against people who move into the borough. If they use distance it will discriminate against those that are unable to live in the catchment area. If they use a lottery it will be exactly that, with winners and losers. If they use some sort of selection it will stop it from being the comprehensive it claims to be and put it at odds with the Lib Dem Election Manifesto. Will they prioritise children in care and pupils with special educational needs? If it is genuinely comprehensive and adopts the same admissions policy as Acton High it will attract a very similar intake to the current Ealing LEA schools and is unlikely to improve on their value added or results. If they use their specialist status to circumnavigate their way around admissions the school will negatively affect the rest of the borough’s schools. Therefore, I will wait with interest to see what criteria they adopt.I have spent the last ten years working in schools run by inner-London LEAs and I do not think that taking a school out of the hands of a good LEA is an effective strategy. I have seen no independent evidence that private providers offer a better service. As a new teacher and as a new Head of Department I received excellent mentoring, advice and support from established teachers in LEA schools. In return, as I became more experienced, I mentored trainee teachers and provided advice and support to colleagues from other schools in the LEA. I have been involved in many joint planning and joint moderation sessions which have improved the quality of teaching and learning that myself and my colleagues were able to provide. Many LEAs have arrangements where new Head Teachers are mentored by more experienced colleagues and schools that are outstanding, in particular areas, help schools that need to improve. Will the teachers from the Free School take part in a similar scheme? I know that many LEAs have a borough-wide agreement on hard to place pupils. This prevents one school from having to cope with a disproportionate number of difficult pupils. Most LEAs also have managed transfer schemes which give difficult pupils the opportunity of a fresh start and often prevents permanent exclusions. Will the Free School take its fair share of difficult pupils? If not, its existence will be detrimental to the existing schools in Ealing. If so it will face the same challenges the LEA schools face. In recent years I have been involved in school-wide initiatives on community cohesion and academic mentoring where we have received free consultancy and skills training from the LEA. Were we to get the same support from a private provider there would have been a significant cost. All these initiatives are good for education and are part of the collegiate approach that many inner-London LEAs have developed in recent years. However, I do not think there would be a business case for many of them if a private company was running a school.The Free School does not want to follow the National Curriculum (NC). There are a few suggestions for enrichment activities on their website, many of which rake place alongside the NC in many schools. However, this is far from an alternative curriculum. Furthermore, LEA schools have a statutory responsibility to teach PSHE, Citizenship, Enterprise education, Careers education and Religious education. I would be interested to know whether the Free School plans to offer any of these topics. Furthermore, there are many subjects which, although hugely important, are not popular at GCSE and A Level. This includes languages (both ancient and modern) and single Sciences. Whilst there is a strong educational argument for keeping these subjects it would be hard to make a financial case. I will be interested to see the proposed curriculum and the range of subjects the Free School is able to offer. I suspect it will be far narrower than an LEA run school.Teachers in LEA schools are bound by school teachers’ pay and conditions. They also benefit from workload agreements. Will the Free School follow the same pay, conditions and workload agreements or will they expect teachers to work longer or shorter hours for more or less money? Will teachers be expected to invigilate, photocopy and supervise lunch duty or will they be freed up to plan, teach and mark? If they run after school, lunchtime or holiday clubs will they be paid extra or will this be part of their contract? Will staff have an entitlement to continuous professional development? Will there be a maximum class size at Key Stage 3, 4 and 5? I notice that the Free School wants to offer a number of shortage subjects. As a comprehensive, inner-London school they are likely to find it hard to recruit teachers for them. Will they use financial incentives to poach them from existing schools? This would make sense from a free market point of view but could end up being divisive and detrimental. It would also open the school up to the danger of teachers threatening to leave at critical times if they were not given financial inducements to stay. LEA schools are only allowed to recruit qualified teachers. Independent schools can employ whom they choose. Will the Free School insist on teachers having UK Qualified Teaching Status? Unqualified, Teach First and newly qualified teachers are far cheaper to employ than fully qualified, more experienced teachers. However, it is important to get the balance of wisdom and enthusiasm correct. Again, this is a strong educational argument but a weak financial one.To fund the free schools the government has taken money from the Harnessing Technology Grant. This has serious ramifications for Ealing schools. There is an ideological argument about the wisdom of withdrawing money from the teaching of information technology in an information age. How many of the well publicised and disastrous failures in IT projects and breaches of security in recent years may have been prevented or mitigated if the personnel involved had a better knowledge of systems analysis, system security, management of change or the requirements of the Data Protection Act which they would have gained through the academic study of ICT. There are also many well regarded vocational courses such as the Cisco Academies that allow less academic pupils to gain useful and relevant qualifications. Without the funding these courses are unlikely to run. What else will be on offer for these 14 – 19 year olds? Latin, perhaps. Regardless of how you feel about the use of technology in education it is now ubiquitous. At the direction of the previous government, schools invested heavily in hardware, software, connectivity and infrastructure. This investment includes leases that still have several years to run and subscriptions that the grant was used to renew. Teachers in all subjects have developed their schemes of work with ICT as an integral part as they were instructed to do by OFSTED and the QCA. There will be serious consequences for teaching and learning in Ealing schools over the next few years when PCs and laptops fall apart because they have not been refreshed, interactive whiteboard bulbs blow and can not be replaced and broadband connections are switched off because schools can no longer meet the subscription. I am aware that the current education system is not perfect. Inner-city schools are reflective of the diverse and challenging society within which they exist. To improve a school without making improvements to a series of social policies would not lead to any meaningful change. BSF, despite all its faults was a genuine attempt at a range of social improvements. The free school movement is not. At every school I have ever worked in there have been some fantastic, inspirational and passionate teachers, but never enough of them. LEAs employ some highly experienced and excellent advisors and managers but they also employ their fair share of dross. Surely that is the same in any organisation and is certainly the case with the private companies that are being mooted to run the Free School. The problem with the privatisation of education and the introduction of market forces is that it is divisive and results in winners and losers. It also shifts the focus of education from being child-centred to being profit centred. I could never endorse a system that puts profits before pupils and actively writes some children off as losers.
Andy Magee ● 5900d2 Comments