It just got a lot harder for parents to set up schoolsBy Toby Young Politics Last updated: March 18th, 2011The Department for Education published new guidelines on its website yesterday for people hoping to set up free schools, making the process considerably harder. The rationale for this, as set out in the guidelines, is that the more rigorous the approval process, the better the schools will be – and the history of charter schools in America would certainly seem to bear that out. But this change will make it virtually impossible for groups of parents and teachers to set up free schools.Under the old system, you only had to submit a fairly short document and the Department would decide on the basis of that document – as well as an interview – whether to approve your application. If your proposal was approved, you were then given an opportunity to work with a project management company, paid for by the DfE, who could help you flesh out the proposal and turn it into an Outline Business Case. Once the OBC had been approved by ministers, you could then move to the final stage which was the signing of your Funding Agreement. That’s the stage the West London Free School is at – we’ve signed our FA.Under the new system, groups will have to submit something that looks much more like an OBC before their proposal will even be considered by the DfE and only once that document has been approved will the groups then be eligible to work with a project management company. The OBC is a very detailed document, setting out your admissions policy, your curriculum, your business plan, what site you hope to end up in, etc. Ours runs to 34 pages and includes 17 appendices. I’m not sure we would have had the resources and expertise to produce it without the help of a project management company – and if my group doesn’t, it’s hard to image any group of parents and teachers being able to manage it. At least, not one that doesn’t include an experienced project manager willing to devote large amounts of time to the proposal for nothing.Of course, there may be organisations – project management companies, even – willing to do the work on a pro bono basis. But EU procurement rules would prevent those companies automatically being hired by the DfE to help usher the groups they’ve been working with through the final stages of the process. They’d have to bid for that work alongside numerous other companies. So they’d have to be pretty charitably-minded.From now on, any group of parents and teachers wanting to set up a free school will almost certainly have to align themselves with one of the multi-Academy sponsors like ARK, Harris or E-ACT. That’s what the Neighbourhood School Campaign has done – the parent group in Wandsworth. Last year, they turned over their project – lock, stock and barrel – to ARK and ARK will be the sole sponsors of the resulting school which has been named the ARK Bolingbroke Academy. No doubt some leading members of the NSC will become governors of the school, but it will be controlled by ARK. Henceforth, something like an ARK Bolingbroke Academy will be the most that groups of parents and teachers can hope for. (Governors of existing schools that want to convert their school to an Academy will still be able to do that. I’m talking about groups of parents and teachers who want to set up new schools from scratch.)It’s not hard to understand why the DfE has closed the door. Politically, it’s harder to present the free schools policy as a way of addressing under-achievement among children from low income families if middle class people like me are setting them up. The West London Free School will have a genuinely comprehensive mix of children, reflecting the social and ethnic diversity of the surrounding area, but my middle class-ness has made it easy for critics of the policy to falsely claim that free schools will just be for white, rich kids – “people like us”, in the words of John Fairhurst, president of the Association of School and College Leaders.The Department may also be worried about the calibre of some of the parent groups who’ve already been approved – though all the ones I’ve met seem thoroughly decent and professional. I hope the new approvals process doesn’t mean that some parent groups who already thought they were over this hurdle will have to submit more detailed proposals – in effect, re-apply for approval – because not all of them will be able to meet the new, more onerous requirements. If it does, those groups will require careful handling by the Department, to put it mildly.There’s also a financial consideration. The work the Department will now expect project management companies to do on the set up of free schools will be considerably less than they’ve been doing up to now and, I imagine, there’ll be a commensurate drop in their fees. Much of the work the DfE has paid for hitherto will now be paid for by the proposers themselves, with multi-academy sponsors either doing it in-house or outsourcing it to project management companies.So there are plenty of good reasons for having a new, more rigorous approvals process. But I can’t help feeling it’s a shame. From now on, free schools will be set up by multi-Academy sponsors – E-ACT has plans to open a “super-chain” of 250 schools, according to the TES – and it’s difficult to see how they’ll differ from Academies. (Sir Bruce Liddington, the director general of E-ACT, is a former schools commissioner at the DfE.) So much for letting a thousand flowers bloom. According to the new “How to apply” form on the DfE’s website, one of the aims of the policy is to “encourage greater innovation in the education system by opening it up to a much wider range of providers and approaches”. That’s less likely to happen now.In the course of setting up the West London Free School, I often rallied my troops by telling them we were cutting a path that other groups of parents and teachers would be able to follow. In fact, the thorns and brambles have grown back up and are thicker and stronger than before. If we were just setting out on our journey today, I’m not sure we’d make it.
Sara Nathan ● 5663d