West London Free School

Latest update on our free school project, courtesy of Newsnight

For those who missed it, here's a report I did for last night's Newsnight about the progress we're making on the school.

Welcome to the DCSF, Mr Gove

Fantastic news that Michael Gove is the new Schools Secretary – or Education Secretary, as he will no doubt shortly be known. Rumours were swirling around last night that the job had gone to David Laws, prompting speculation that the Conservatives' manifesto commitment to free schools had been junked in the course of negotiations with the Lib Dems. Fiona Millar, Alastair Campbell's partner and the most vocal opponent of allowing parents and teachers to set up new schools, even felt confident enough to write something for Labour List entitled 'Why would Michael Gove want to give his job to a Lib Dem?'

Not so fast, Fiona. It turns out Michael Gove has got the job after all. And, judging from the just published Coalition Agreement, the new Government has not junked the policy. On the contrary, it's right there in black and white:

We agree to promote the reform of schools in order to ensure:

* that new providers can enter the state school system in response to parental demand;

* that all schools have greater freedom over curriculum; and,

* that all schools are held properly accountable.

That last cause might set alarm bells ringing for some. At first glance, it looks as though the Conservatives have been forced, at the insistence of the Lib Dems, to keep in place the veto that local authorities currently enjoy over the set up of new Academies. But according to my sources, that is not the case. Indeed, the local authority veto was a "red line" during the negotiations, i.e., something the Tories weren't prepared to negotiate on. They know that if local authorities can block the creation of free schools, they will – and that even goes for Conservative-controlled councils, as we discovered during the election campaign when the Conservative head of Kent County Council expressed scepticism about the policy.

The fact that the coalition Government is four-square behind free schools is fantastic news, and not just for the group of 500 parents and teachers I'm hoping to set up the West London Free School with, but for the 450 groups that have already registered with the New Schools Network and are champing at the bit to get going. More than that, it's good news for the children of this country.

Until now, the only children who have had access to high-performing secondary schools that offer a rigorous, academic education are those who are lucky enough to get into one of England's 164 remaining grammars, are of the right particular faith or whose parents are wealthy enough to either go private or move into the catchment area of a good comprehensive. Now, thanks to this new policy, every child will soon have access to a good school, regardless of wealth, ability or faith.

Welcome to the DCSF, Mr Gove. Your desk awaits you.

 

 

Election Hustings

It was great to see so many members of the parent group at the educational hustings at Twyford last Friday night, including all three Prospective Parliamentary Candidates for Ealing Central and Acton. 

 

The following is a summary of where the parties said they stood when it came to our proposal to set up a parent-sponsored Academy in the borough. 

For Parliament:

•               The Conservatives: Angie Bray confirmed that allowing groups like ours to set up free schools is one of the Conservative Party’s flagship social policies and she was confident that under the Tories the Department for Children, Schools and Families would make sufficient capital funding available to enable us to set up our school. She also confirmed that if the Conservatives win the election they will remove the veto power that local authorities currently have over the creation of new Academies meaning it won’t matter what colour Ealing Council is – blue, red or yellow.

•               The Liberal Democrats: Jon Ball said that while the Liberal Democrats were interested in allowing parents to sponsor schools and the schools to develop their own ethos and curriculum, they would insist that any new schools, including Academies, are set up in partnership with local authorities. Asked if he thought it probable that the Parliamentary Party would insist on that as a condition of supporting the Conservatives’ education policy in a hung Parliament, he responded that they were concerned about the negative effect of free schools on neighbouring schools and they believed that granting local authorities “strategic oversight” over the creation of all new schools was the best way to safeguard existing schools. Consequently, if the Liberal Democrats win an overall majority on Thursday or hold the whip hand in a hung Parliament it is likely that our group will not be able to make any progress without the blessing of Ealing Council. He also said that the Liberal Democrats are committed to changing the School Admissions Code so faith schools like Twyford will no longer be able to give preference to children of a particular faith – at least, not to the extent that they do at present.

•                Labour: Bassam Mahfouz acknowledged that there would shortly be a need for a new secondary school in the borough, in addition to the one Ealing Council is planning to build in Greenford, but said he would favour the creation of a cooperative trust school in partnership with the local authority rather than a parent-sponsored Academy. He suggested that the key thing wasn't "what you call it, but how it works.” He said there would be an opportunity for local parents to have an input into such a school, along with other stakeholders in the borough.

For the council:

•               The Conservative council candidates were extremely positive and said they were four square behind this initiative and would provide whatever support we needed. Angie Bray pointed out that Jason Stacey, the Conservative leader of the Council, made a public statement in support of the West London Free School earlier in the week. They suggested that we might want to discuss with the Council in due course support services that we might need from them.

•               The Liberal Democrats were the least sympathetic of the three main parties to what we want to do. Harvey Rose, the leader of the Lib Dem group contesting the local elections, said they were not in favour of free schools and that we should be trying to raise standards from inside the borough’s existing schools rather than trying to set up a new one and they were concerned that funding for a new free school in the borough would divert resources from the existing secondary schools. He conceded that there might be a need for a new school in the borough in due course, but was adamant that it should be set up by the local authority. When I asked him whether there might be any circumstances in which a Liberal Democrat controlled Council would support our initiative, he said it was unlikely. “You would have a mountain to climb,” he said. However, when pushed he did say they would be prepared to listen to us.

•               The Labour council candidates denied that there was a need for a greater range of different schools in the borough and said that local parents already have a choice if they’re prepared to get on the bus or tube and go out of the borough. They said that in the event of regaining control of Ealing Council they would be willing to listen to any proposals our group might bring forward, but would need to be persuaded that a parent-sponsored Academy was the best way of meeting the need for additional secondary school places in the borough as opposed to a cooperative trust school. Their Shadow Finance Spokesperson appeared to become increasingly interested in our scheme as the evening progressed and said that personally she recognised the benefit of diversity in educational provision.

We would like to thank all the candidates that took part in the discussion – and those that didn’t have an opportunity, such as Tim Carpenter of the Libertarian Party who is hoping to be elected in the Council ward of Walpole and is an enthusiastic supporter of ours. All three main parties’ representatives engaged in a lively, but respectful exchange and the evening remained broadly good-humoured throughout. There is no doubt that all the candidates care a great deal about education in the borough, with a surprising number either currently serving or having served as governors of local primary and secondary schools. In addition to the hustings, we also wrote to all the local and national candidates in Ealing asking for their backing and we have put the names of those who have written back, pledging their support, on our website.

We would also like to thank Alice Hudson and Tony McKee at Twyford who kindly allowed us to use the Performance Centre and the Twyford students who ensured that the event ran smoothly.

Finally, could I take this opportunity to draw your attention to the consultation Ealing Council is carrying out about the sort of school the new high school in Greenford ought to be? The Church of England Diocese has expressed an interest in running the school in federation with Twyford, mirroring Twyford’s ethos and standards but without the faith-based admissions policy. I’m 100% supportive of this initiative and have described the sort of school I would like the West London Free School to be as a “secular faith school”. The new high school is too far away for most of us, and we’ll need an additional school to meet demand in any event, but if I was a local parent in Greenford the idea of being able to send my children to a secular version of Twyford would be enormously appealing. If you could take the time to fill out this survey and make your feelings known it would undoubtedly help their cause.

Devising a curriculum

"I'm not sure you should be letting the BBC film this," whispered one of the teachers on my steering committee. About a dozen of us were sitting round my kitchen table trying to thrash out the West London Free School's curriculum and a BBC camera crew was there to record our progress. "Any teacher watching this will just think, 'What a bunch of complete amateurs,'" he said.

I was a little taken aback by this. Until then, I was feeling rather proud of the conscientious way we had gone about devising a curriculum. For instance, I had asked one teacher in the group to review all the latest research about the pros and cons of setting and even managed to supply her with a summary of John Hattie's book Visible Learning and a copy of a paper by Professor Jo Boaler entitled "The 'Psychological Prisons' from Which They Never Escaped: the role of ability grouping in reproducing social class inequalities"

But he was undoubtedly right. It was the fact that most of us were so clearly on a vertical learning curve that would grate with teachers. It would confirm their suspicion that a bunch of parents had no business trying to start a school.

At the beginning of the process, I thought all the key curriculum questions could be solved by doing some elementary research. Take the question of GCSEs versus the middle years programme (MYP) of the International Baccalaureate (IB).

Of course, MYP isn't an option at the moment, thanks to Schools Secretary Ed Balls' insistence that all new state secondary schools have to teach the national curriculum, but I'm hoping that his successor - Labour or Conservative - will be a little more flexible.

I met with a former headteacher of one of Britain's leading independent schools and she assured me that MYP was the answer to my prayers. "It's light years ahead of the national curriculum," she said.

But a couple of days later I met with another headteacher who told me that MYP was "politically correct nonsense". "It's designed to churn out pro-European social democrats," he said. "There's all this balls about 'joined up learning' and 'inter-disciplinary approaches'. What that essentially boils down to is indoctrinating children about global warming."

In the end, we decided not to go for MYP for the practical reason that the process of becoming an MYP-accredited school would add an additional layer of expense to our set-up costs.

Unfortunately, that was just the tip of the iceberg. What about GCSEs versus IGCSEs? Or A-levels versus the IB? A combination of IGCSEs and the IB looked superficially attractive, not least because they both require a bit more intellectual rigour than GCSEs and A-levels.

But do universities take the "hardness" of IGCSEs and the IB into account when making offers? I checked with my old admissions tutor at Oxford and he told me that he regards an IGCSE "B" as the equivalent of a GCSE "A". Some teachers on my committee thought that underestimated just how much harder IGCSEs are.

We took the coward's way out. We decided to postpone the decision on whether to go for the IB or A-levels until our sixth form is up and running and leave the issue of whether to teach GCSEs or IGCSEs to our own heads of department. That is to say, it will be up to them to make the call on a subject-by-subject basis. The same goes for setting.

As a general principle, we want teachers to have as much autonomy as possible at our school. We want them to choose the syllabus that will best enable them to communicate their passion for their subject, and decide how best to deliver it to a mixed ability year group.

We most emphatically don't want them to "teach to the test", and one advantage of mixing up GCSEs and IGCSEs is that it will make it harder to rank the West London Free School in the league tables.

We also recognise that it would be premature to make too many curriculum decisions before our senior leadership team is in place. We are very clear about our ethos and vision - we want our school to be rigorously academic, offering children a classical liberal education - but we're a little more flexible when it comes to the curriculum.

I hope any teachers watching us thrash out these issues on TV won't form too negative an impression.

As with so many aspects of starting a school, it's a question of figuring out what part of the process you can usefully contribute to and what is best left to the professionals.

When it comes to the nitty gritty of devising a curriculum, I've learnt the wisdom of Wittgenstein's maxim: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."