Toby Young on education policy in Lambeth

Posted on 26. Apr, 2010 by webmaster in News

Like many people, I didn’t spend much time thinking about education until I became a parent. Now that I have four children, I think about little else. Finding a good state primary school in West London where I live is hard enough, but a good comprehensive is a real challenge, particularly if you don’t meet the eligibility criteria for a faith school. Given that my wife and I are committed to educating our children in the state sector, I thought we’d either have to take what was on offer or move to the country.

Then I realized there was a third option: I could get together with my friends and neighbours and start a school. You may think that’s pie in the sky, but a group of parents in Lambeth have done precisely that. In 1993, a collection of community activists in Norwood got together and decided to set up a comprehensive to serve the local area. Four years later, the Elmgreen School admitted its first students and is now one of Lambeth’s most popular comprehensives.

If it can be done in your borough, why not in mine? At the beginning of September I held a meeting at my house in Acton and invited anyone who was concerned about their children’s education to come along. I was expecting, at most, half a dozen. In fact, 45 people turned up, all of them local parents. Since then, the number of people who’ve asked to get involved has grown to 500. Out of that group has emerged a steering committee that includes the Director of Academic Management at Latymer Upper School, the Head of Strategy at Orange, the Chief Economist at OfGem, two architects, a chartered surveyor, a planning consultant and a member of the Foreign Office. We now meet regular at my house to move the project forward.

Our plan is to set up Britain’s first “free school”, but that phrase can be misleading. All it means is that it won’t cost anything to send your children to our school. We want to set it up as the first parent-promoted academy and, like other academies, It will be funded directly by the Department for Children, Schools and Families. However, it won’t be “free” as in “no rules”. Talking to other parents, it’s clear that the vogue for progressive education has passed. Our school will be characterized by high standards of behaviour, academic rigour and a classical curriculum. Latin will be compulsory through Key Stage 3 and, after that, if a child drops Latin he or she will have to take a modern language. We don’t want any child to get left behind at our school, but the emphasis will be on helping all children get ahead.

Should parents be allowed to set up schools? This is a big talking point in education at the moment, particularly as the Conservatives have pledged to make it easier if they win the election. One of the biggest worries is that if we’re allowed to do it — if the government gives our school the thumbs up and provides us with the necessary funding — what’s to stop the BNP or the Scientologists from following suit? Once you take education away from the professionals it will be like opening Pandora’s Box.

I think this fear is misplaced. It has been possible for parents and teachers to start secondary schools for at least ten years and the one that’s been established in Lambeth could not be more respectable. The process is so fiendishly difficult, as I can testify, that only the very serious-minded will stay the course. And that will remain true even if the process is made slightly less complicated by the next government.

I’m in regular contact with nearly all the groups trying to do this and they are far from eccentric in their attitude to education. On the contrary, they are traditionalists. The sort of schools we want to set up will be characterised by high standards of behaviour, lofty academic expectations and old-fashioned models of pastoral care — schools like Mossbourne Academy in Hackney which, last year, saw 86 per cent of its students get at least five GCSEs at grade C or above, including English and maths.

These are the sort of schools that parents want to send their children to and the impetus to set up new schools will, in the majority of cases, come from parents who don’t have access to schools like this in their areas. Far from being an alarming prospect, this has the potential to transform British education, making opportunities available to ordinary people that, at present, are confined to those who can afford to educate their children privately or move into the catchment areas of high-performing comprehensives or who happen to be of a particular faith. We want to set up a high-performing, academic school that is open to all, regardless of wealth, ability or faith. If my group is anything to go by, it is this possibility that has inspired so many people to get involved.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating a wholesale transfer of power away from the state. Unlike my opponents, I’m not a believer in one-size-fits-all when it comes to education. My group simply wants to create an alternative to the various schools that already exist in our area so parents of limited means have a bit more choice.

If we succeed — and I believe we will, regardless of the outcome of the election — some genuine eccentrics may follow in our footsteps. But that won’t be the end of the world. Who knows, some of these groups may come up with new methods of educating children that are more effective than the old ones. This sort of experimentation and diversity should be encouraged, not frowned upon. The most practical way to solve the problems besetting British education is to let a thousand flowers bloom.

Navigating the bureaucracy involved in setting up a state school isn’t easy, but so far the Department for Children, Schools and Families has been quite helpful. So far, our biggest headache has been finding a suitable site, but we think we’ve finally racked that problem. My biggest fear is that we may be too successful, too quickly. Elmgreen is now so popular that one of the original members of the Norwood parent group couldn’t get his own child into the school last year. I hope the same fate doesn’t befall my own four children.

To find out more about the West London Free School, visit www.westlondonfreeschool.co.uk

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