Government Spin Won’t Fund Our Schools

OCOS activist Kiri Tunks writes on the campaign for fair funding for our schools:

Fair Funding meeting in Lambeth, 15 March, with 350 parents present...

The government claims that school funding is protected; that the funding per child is the same; that they are equalising funding inequities across the UK.

But this simply isn’t true.

The government has accused teaching unions and parent campaigns of scaremongering but, in fact, we are witnessing the largest real term cuts in education funding since the 1970s.

Using statistics from the DFE, the National Audit Office and the Institute of Fiscal Studies, education trade unions have created the School Cuts website. Just enter the name or postcode of your local school to see the cuts it is likely to face.

This analysis of the impact of the government’s policy on schools around the UK shows the truth is rather different.

Funding per child is not in line with inflation so claiming it is the same is disingenuous because in real terms it simply won’t cover the same costs.

On top of that, the government has put more costs on to school budgets without increasing funding to cover them. These are things like the apprenticeship levy, the annual pay awards to staff and salary increases, increases in the teachers’ pension scheme and National Insurance costs as well as other inflationary pressures on non-staff spending.

None of these things are in the control of the schools and colleges and yet they will have to find a way to pay them with no extra money being given to cover them.

What does this mean?

The only way a school can increase its funding is to increase the number of children on roll without increasing its staff allocation.

So we are already seeing:

• Increased class sizes
• Teachers teaching out of their specialism
• A reduction in Teaching Assistants and administrative support
• Unqualified/inexperienced/cheap teachers and support staff
• Staff pay being held down unfairly and their conditions worsening
• Staff leaving or not being replaced
• The narrowing of the curriculum as schools focus goes on core/EBacc subjects
• Cuts to all “non-essential” activities such as trips or libraries or
• Lack of resources – teachers are reporting a lack of pencils, glue and paper

 

This isn’t scaremongering. This is reporting from the front line.

And it is going to get worse.

 

How bad are the cuts?

 

According to statistics from the National Audit Office, these are the largest real-term funding cuts in education since the 1970s . The current proposals are already a huge change compared with funding under the last coalition government.

 

So we are looking at: 

• 8% real term reduction in per pupil funding for mainstream schools 2014-2020
• UK mainstream schools needing to make savings of £3bn
• 60.6% of academies saying they have overspent their budget 

What about the improved National Funding Formula?

The National Funding Formula is the system by which schools are funded. Previously, this money would go to the Local Authority who would decide how to divide up the cash. Now schools are being funded directly. The government say that the National Funding Formal needed to be revised as funds were not fairly shared out.

 

It is true that the National Funding Formula needs an overhaul. There is a postcode lottery and there are many places around the UK where schools are simply not getting enough money. However, the funding disparities are not as bad as has been claimed with statistics showing that funding has, largely, followed area costs and child poverty levels. Even so, the new NFF means that nearly every area is seeing their funding levelled down rather than levelled up.

 

Put together this means that 98.5% of schools, and 100% of colleges, are set to have per pupil funding cut in real terms.

This means:

• £339 average loss per primary pupil 
• £477 average loss per secondary pupil

The cuts are not evenly spread and are regressive with the poorest areas receiving the highest cuts 

• £447 average loss per primary pupil 
• £658 average loss per secondary pupil 

In Waltham Forest, cuts will look like this:

•  £20,185,760 loss in funding by 2019 
• £538 average loss per pupil
• 541 fewer teachers
  

   

The cuts are universal with no school spared. Academies & Free schools are among the worst hit:

• West London Free Schools                                                          £1,016 per pupil
• Mossbourne Academy                                                                  £965 per pupil
• Ark Schools                                                                                         £701 per pupil 
• Harris                                                                                                    £671 per pupil 
• Oasis                                                                                                     £609 per pupil

 

And Conservative areas are being hit too. Even the last Chancellor, George Osborne, has met with Education Secretary, Justine Greening, to share his concerns about the cuts. She must be worried herself as schools in her own constituency of Putney are looking at cuts of between £655-£834 per pupil.

 

Even the claim of an “NFF Floor” which was meant to guarantee that no school would lose more than 3% of their funding doesn’t hold water. This ‘guarantee’ is akin to safeguarding, so the floor will stay at same level until the NFF authorises an increase. In effect, this will mean 5,300 schools receiving flat cash funding for years up to 2025 and beyond.

  

 

Spin

 

The Department for Education will tell anyone who listens that the numbers on the School Cuts website are speculation and spin.  They need to be reminded that these figures are the government’s own figures and that these calculations have been endorsed by reliable independent bodies. Additionally, the website is endorsed by the NUT, the ATL, the GMB, Unite, NAHT and Unison.

 

The sources are: 

• Schools funding allocation for 2015/16 from the Department for Education
• National Funding Formula consultation data from the Department for Education
• National Audit Office estimate of school costs 

Furthermore, the calculations have been upheld by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

 

Who else is worried?

 

Parents all over the countries are getting organised under the Fair Funding for All banner. There have been huge public meetings and demonstrations all over the UK such from Haringey to Cheshire, from Lambeth to Shrewsbury.

Schools in previously better-funded areas have been able to make real improvements in the quality of their provision. This has only been achieved because schools have been able to invest in staff, resources, training and infrastructure. Without that money, we will see standards and conditions rolling backwards. 

  

We want all schools to have the necessary money to make these improvements. And a country that is the fifth richest in the world should be able to find the necessary money.

 

You can find out more about the Fair Funding for All campaign here

 

What we need to do

 

There are indications are that government is starting to backtrack on NFF at least but this is not time to take our foot off the pedal. We need to press harder.

Now is the time to increase the pressure

 

1) Use the www.schoolcuts.org.uk website to find out how your local school will be hit.

 

Share the figures on Facebook and Twitter 

Talk to other parents about them 

Sign the petition via the site

Email your MP via the site

 

2) Respond to the government’s consultation before 22nd March.  The government is consulting on its new formula for distributing school funds and it’s vital that lots of us respond.

 

Here’s how to do it:

 

• Visit https://consult.education.gov.uk/funding-policy-unit/schools-national-funding-formula2/consultation/intro/ and enter your details 
•  Go to question 1 and tick ‘no’ (There are 19 questions in total but you don’t have to answer them all. It’s most important that you answer the first.)
•  Fill in any other bits you want and submit the response
•  If you would like further guidance on completing the consultation, have a look at the guide on the website http://www.fairfundingforallschools.org/resource.html 
•  Sign the petition - https://www.change.org/p/stop-school-funding-cuts-all-our-children-deserve-a-great-education

 

3) Write a letter or E-mail to your MP

 

 

 You can find a template letter to use and more information about this on the resources page of the Fair Funding For All Schools website (http://www.fairfundingforallschools.org/resource.html)

 

 4) Start a campaign at your school 

 

 

Parents in the Fair Funding Campaign have been setting themselves up as school reps and working with other parents to raise awareness.

• Talk to other parents 
• Talk to the Headteacher 
• Ask if s/he will write a letter to Justine Greening 
• Will she let you organize a meeting for parents in the school 
• Contact us and let us know what is happening and how we can help
• 
  

5) Join the campaign on Social Media

 

Join the conversation online, help us to reach other parents, and keep up to date with campaign developments by joining our Facebook group  

Some Twitter accounts to follow are

 

@Fairfundschools

@HaringeyParents 

@NoSchoolCuts

@FairFundLambeth 

@FairFundCheshE 

@OurSchoolsLBWF

@RedbridgeRAA

Help raise the profile of the campaign by tweeting about it using  

#schoolsjustwannahavefunds

The voices of parents matter and have real power. Let’s work together to build a campaign to stop these cuts. With our allies, we are a formidable force.

 

 

Many thanks to @FairFundSchools and @FairFundLambeth for their links and resources

 

 

Another packed public meeting as parents and teachers unite for our community schools

Well over 100 people crowded into the excellent venue at Harmony Hall off the High Street on 21st October for another packed OCOS public meeting. Kiri Tunks from Our Community Our Schools introduced the meeting as a contribution to public discussion about OCOS’s proposed Charter in the borough, explaining that it was intended to be something that could be amended, developed and used by parents, teachers and everyone who cares about progressive education. She then introduced the first speaker Melissa Benn who spoke about the original vision of comprehensive education and why it matters who owns our schools.

Melissa pointed to the widespread, political and media representation of comprehensive schools as associated with ‘failure’ and argued that this orchestrated campaign masked their huge successes. Prior to comprehensive movement, children had been socially divided and told they were failures by 11, supported by disgraced eugenic theories of educational ability. From mid 1960s the tripartite system that segregated people into secondary modern, grammar and public schools was challenged by the comprehensive movement and by new academic theories of educational psychology. This movement, she argued, was a tremendous success of our society and we should celebrate it.

‘All our children should go to schools together’ she urged, arguing that all the ways of dividing our children fundamentally arise on the basis of class division. Private schools, Melissa argued  ‘have everything they want, except they turn out some very strange citizens.’ She called for a government that was strong enough to challenge increasingly entrenched social privilege and would fight for all schools to have fair admissions. Melissa argued that it was government policy and not failures of the comprehensive model that created divisions and fuelled parental anxiety. The best school systems in the world, she argued, send all their children to school together and even the  OECD says it’s good for society and for children too. She finished by reiterating that it really matters who runs schools. We are being pushed back to a 19^th century patchwork of provision – we need to restore local schools to local communities.

The next speaker was Kevin Courtney, Deputy General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers who said he was delighted to be at a meeting organised by parents and hoped there would be hundreds more like it across the country. Kevin focused on the problems created in the school system by teachers’ heavy workloads. ‘We are losing thousands of good teachers. It will become a problem in schools and lead to staff shortages and fatigue’. But the fundamental problem, he urged was less the volume of work than the composition of the workload. Teachers, he said, have to be increasingly focused on data, tests, league tables and evidence: ‘measurement is driving the whole child out of the picture. We need children to be happy, rounded human beings – creativity and enjoyment are lost. This is accountability gone mad. There is a lack of trust in the system for teachers’.

Kevin pointed to the US, where children are tested all the time and teachers pay is tied to children’s  performance. “It’s like doing a full day’s work and then going home and spending hours explaining that you’ve done it”.

Kevin finished by pointing to NUT’s manifesto for the elections and in particular the demand to tackle child poverty. ‘Politicians attack schools for not being ambitious enough for working class children. Every teacher knows this is their job but we also know that child poverty makes a big difference. We’re in one of the richest and most unequal societies in the world. We need politicians to focus on making society more equal and freeing teachers to teach.’

The meeting was then addressed by Jenny Smith, headteacher at Frederick Bremer school, featured on ‘Educating the East End’. Jenny opened by saying it was fantastic for a head to be invited to speak in a meeting where we’re not having to defend our schools from attacks and academisation. Jenny echoed Melissa Benn in condemning the attacks on community schools and pointed to her own family which had been divided by the pre-comprehensive education system. Being able to go to a comprehensive school, she said, made a huge difference. Jenny talked about what London schools can achieve, pointing to the investment that came through London Challenge and which led to such coordinated improvement in standards. But she condemned the Coalition’s attack since 2010 and its ‘chaotic’ policies: ‘We’re now being judged by our GCSEs alone, while the Free School initiative destabilises school system locally and creates a perception that there is something wrong with our existing schools’.

Jenny argued that ‘we have to retain the principles and models of community education. Waltham Forest is unusual in its diversity and our community schools represent our local community and still dominate the educational offer’.

She also recounted how when applying for a headteachership, she deliberately chose a community school and argued that at her school ‘tolerance respect and compassion are integral to our school. There is no labelling, bullying is rare, every child is known, nourished and nurtured in our school. Our community schools sustain community cohesion.’ ‘It’s difficult to hate’ she said ‘when the label is a friend at school’.

She finished by calling on the media to stop attacking community schools and promote their achievements. She argued that we need to improve pay for teachers in Waltham Forest, noting that we are only paid outer London weighting, and she called on teaching unions to ‘work with us to build a new relationship’. Jenny finished with a simple call for politicians to ‘make the madness stop’ and for parents to continue to support their community schools.

The last speaker was the local MP for Leyton and Wanstead John Cryer, who opened by reiterating the points made by earlier speakers about the iniquities of the pre-comprehensive era and told the meeting about how his mother had been written off by the school system and left a year below the national minimum. John also repeated his now notorious description of Free Schools as a ‘barking mad’ experiment which put people like ‘that screaming egotist Toby Young’ and ‘the Chuckle Brothers in Rotherham’ in charge of schools. He also warned that the recent scandals were, in his view, ‘just the thin end of the wedge’. John pointed to the scandalous waste involved in the Free Schools experiment, citing the example of the Suffolk Free School which had £2 million spent on it and has 36 pupils. ‘Imagine what Jenny Smith’s school could do with £2 million?’, he said.

Academisation and Free Schools he said were fragmenting the school system and reinforcing class divisions and finished, like Kevin, with an impassioned plea to tackle poverty: children from poor, working class families, living in cramped conditions, with parents who work every hour that God sends to make ends meet, they’re struggling from day one at school. Address that and you will change society for the better.’

Discussion opened with an inspiring contribution from pupils from Frederick Bremer school: ‘We want to learn in a dynamic place, we want to learn more life skills that prepare us for the modern era, especially the technology; and we’re not robots, we want to be creative and dynamic. We need more funding and more resources.’

Other speakers urged parents to become governors to ensure that their schools were community places, while many speakers made clear that they wanted all children educated together and not segregated on sex, faith or class lines. There were calls to include more on sex education in the Charter and for initiatives which made it clear that Waltham Forest is a great place to go to school precisely because of its diversity.

It was another inspiring meeting which affirmed the value of the Charter, added some valuable new elements and came up with some excellent concrete ideas for the future. Thanks to everyone who came and watch this space for more soon.

Why should parents support the teachers’ strike?

This blog post was written by Kiri Tunks, local parent in Waltham Forest and teacher in Tower Hamlets:

***

Teachers know that any strike by teachers is a major headache for parents. We realise that many parents will have to work at home, find emergency childcare, or take a day’s leave. Believe me when I tell you that no teacher takes this strike lightly, and it is precisely because of the concerns we have for education and young people that we do it.

Officially, the strike has been called over excessive workload and bureaucracy, the introduction of Performance related pay and the raising of the retirement age to 68. These are the kind of industrial questions that we are allowed to take action on by law and, if they are imposed, will cause a crisis in our schools.

But I can tell you that what is also motivating teachers to walk out is that they are sick of their professionalism and expertise being undermined; sick of being ignored and dismissed by an arrogant Department of Education; and deeply concerned about what this government’s changes are doing to education and to young people.

Here are a few things we think are wrong:

- This government is handing community schools, land and resources to private companies, including closing down LA schools against the wishes of the parents.

- This government thinks your child doesn’t need a qualified teacher.

- This government thinks that if your teacher’s morale is low that that is good for your child’s education.

- The government thinks it’s more important to invite the free market into education than provide school places for children where they are needed.

We think this is madness, which is why we have been engaged in a community campaign to ‘Stand Up For Education’. We don’t think this government wants to discuss these changes publically because we think parents will share our alarm.

- We think schools are run best by local authorities in the local communities they serve.

- We think every child deserves a qualified teacher.

- We think any changes to exams, curricula and policy should be thought out and properly consulted on in a realistic timescale.

- We think it is immoral to hand over public funds to private individuals & companies without any public redress or accountability.

We can’t strike on these questions but they matter every bit as much to us and we will campaign just as hard on them.

So why should you care about teachers’ workload, pay and pension rights?

Workload & Bureaucracy

Despite what you hear, teachers do not roll into school at 9am and swagger home at 3pm. A teacher’s working day will typically start much, much earlier and continue into the evenings, over the weekend and through the much-lauded holidays.  The Department of Education was recently forced by an NUT campaign to publish its much overdue workload survey which showed how workload has risen under Gove.

The workload survey disclosed that primary teachers are routinely working nearly 60 hours a week; secondary teachers are working 55 hours a week.  This kind of workload is ridiculous in any job, but in one that is so physically & emotionally draining it is utterly stupid. It is bad for teachers but it is bad for children too.

Worse, much of the work teachers are being asked to do is not directly associated with teaching and learning: far too much of the work is unnecessary bureaucracy that actively prevents us spending time on the more important job of planning resources and lessons, doing research or giving feedback to our students. Perhaps this is why 40% of teachers leave within the first 5 years of teaching.

Quite simply, this workload is making qualified teachers leave, exhausting those who stay and putting off those who might once have considered teaching as a career.

Performance Related Pay

It doesn’t work in teaching. Every study, every piece of research, has failed to show that judging individuals in a competitive systems simply doesn’t work in a school or college context which relies on collaboration and co-operation between staff and students. It assumes that children learn in neat little percentiles and that it is possible to apportion every little bit of progress made to a particular individual.

But it just doesn’t work like that. Children make progress for a number of reasons, and because of a range of people who have helped them. Bringing competition between teachers into the education of your child won’t benefit them. It will simply narrow what they are taught, because when you are being judged on what a child’s progress is, you will only want to teach what can be measured.

Unfair Pension Changes

Our pension fund is self-funded: all the money in the teachers’ fund was paid in by teachers. In fact, we have paid in £46 billion more than we have taken out.

Where is it?

We have asked the government to do a valuation of the pension scheme and prove that changes are necessary. They have refused.

Over the years, teachers have accepted a lower salary in lieu of a decent pension. We are now paying more in, and getting less, at the same time as working longer hours. Now the government wants us to work these crazy hours until we are 68.

Ask any teacher if they think they can work full time in a classroom (on a 55+hour week) until they are 68 and they will laugh in your face.

We want a teaching profession which has teachers with the energy & enthusiasm to help all children develop and progress in creative and dynamic ways.

This government’s policies are having the opposite effect.

This is why we strike.

Our Community, Our Schools – campaigning for OUR schools (and against Michael Gove’s)

It’s been a busy couple of weeks for Our Community, Our Schools supporters. We’ve been raising the profile of the issue of Free Schools and countering the misconceptions about our community schools in both the local and national press – and now we’re taking our case to Parliament.

Kiri Tunks, local parent and Tower Hamlets teacher was recorded as part of the Waltham Forest Guardian’s ‘Speak Out’ series of 2 minute videos, making a powerful plea for people to turn away from backing Free Schools. You can watch Kiri’s short film here. Kiri spoke about her experience of improving schools in Tower Hamlets without any Free Schools or Academies – a theme that was picked up by Jonathan White in this week’s Waltham Forest Guardian.

The Guardian featured revealing figures showing that the vast majority of primary schools in Waltham Forest have met a tougher new government literacy and numeracy target. 75% of pupils in all but two schools are reaching the required levels and as Jonathan pointed out, this flies in the face of the government’s disaster narrative which insists that Free Schools and Academies are necessary to drive up standards.

Meanwhile, in the national press, OCOS supporter Scarlet Harris featured in Zoe Williams’ latest piece for the Guardian. Scarlet was quoted discussing the farcical process of local consultation used by sponsors and the DfE to set up a Free School and highlighting the dangers of allowing groups like Oasis and Tauheedul to essentially design their own consultations.

Zoe’s article, which details the growing local opposition to Free Schools, also quotes education expert Laura McInerny highlighting the plight of the children suffering under Gove’s experiment: ‘these kids have one shot at education. I’m not minded to sacrifice 400 children in al-Madinah so that a minister can learn a hard lesson’.

OCOS supporters are taking the campaign into Westminster this week as we have written a submission to the Education Select Committee’s call for evidence as part of a new inquiry on Academies and the processes for setting up Free Schools. We have always maintained that the process of setting up a Free School is fatally flawed, perverse and profoundly undemocratic and that’s what we’re telling the Select Committee. We'll publish our evidence or refer you to it, as soon as we're able to.

More than 800 people have now signed our petition and we have ambitious plans for a new phase of campaigning, including a new letter writing campaign, more leafleting in the New Year campaign and more public meetings, so watch this space for more details soon.

Stand up for schools

A blog from Our Community, Our Schools supporter and local parent and teacher Kiri Tunks, explaining why teachers in the North-West are taking industrial action on Thursday and why teachers are demonstrating in central London today:

***

On June 27th teachers in the North West of England will be on strike. This strike will be the first of a series of joint NUT & NASUWT strike in defence of education and teachers’ pay and conditions. Strikes will follow in other regions (including the SE in the autumn).

Around the rest of the country, teachers in these unions are organising solidarity actions (demonstrations, parents meetings & stalls) to show support for colleagues taking the lead in the North West but also to try and communicate to people outside education just what this government’s education policy will mean for our young people and our communities.

To hear the Michaels Gove & Wilshaw, it would be easy to think that schools are terrible places where our young people are failed on a daily basis by their teaching and support staff, and where their promise is snuffed out by uncaring and unskilled educators.

To be a teacher means waking every morning to some new alleged horror or failure that must be accounted for. To be a parent, without experience or knowledge of schools, these stories bring fresh fears about the schools they will send their children to.

The government & OFSTED claim that schools are failing our young people yet, claiming that standards are too low, yet their evidence is widely disputed or taken out of context.

Gove & Wilshaw refuse to accept that factors outside the control of schools or teaching staff can impact on the achievement of young people, and yet all the evidence shows that they do. And, whilst berating schools for ‘failing’, they are guilty of removing strategies and structures that, properly supported, have been shown to make a difference.

Instead they have just attacked community schools at every level, moving the goal posts such as the changing of grade boundaries in GCSE exams last year after the exams had been taken or changing the OFSTED lesson criteria so that to be judged a ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ teacher requires almost superhuman powers.

There are numerous examples to show that schools do well when working in partnership with their neighbouring schools, pooling resources and sharing expertise; when there are strong links with parents and the community; when teachers are given time and resources to plan, prepare and give feedback; when the obstacles children face in their lives are not ignored but dealt with by society and not just left for schools to sort out.

Despite the relentless rhetoric of this government, it is not teachers or schools who are the enemies of promise but this government.  Since coming to power they have been responsible for:

• Worsening ratios in nurseries; and no longer requiring schools to employ qualified teachers.
• Rushing through a new curriculum, without resources and against the advice of many teachers. Introducing expensive, unnecessary new tests for 5 and 11 year olds.
• Reducing young people's opportunities by trebling tuition fees and abolishing the Education Maintenance Allowance.
• Wasting the Olympic legacy by undermining sport in schools.
• Building free schools for secondary age children in places where they are not needed (instead of primary schools which are needed) and paving the way for private companies to make a profit from running our schools.
• Making it illegal for your Council to build new schools where they are needed.
• Causing chaos in teachers' pay and pensions and making teaching a less attractive prospect for young people

These are some of the reasons that NUT & NASUWT members will begin a campaign of rolling strike action in the North West next week. Teachers know that unless we take a stand then the right to a free and fair education system for all will be severely undermined.

In London on June 25th, there will be a march to, and demonstration outside, the Department of Education under the banner ‘Stand up for Schools – march for education’ which hundreds of teachers, parents and children are expected to attend. This demonstration is a gesture of support for striking teachers in the North West, but also an appeal to the wider community to join our campaign to defend education.

Details of the demo are here:

https://www.facebook.com/events/570147083015703/?fref=ts

 

 

 

Speeches from our public meeting (1)

This is a slightly edited version of the speech given by Jonathan White opening the public meeting on 1 March. We hope to publish the others shortly:

***

We called this meeting 'Education Crisis?' Partly to question what was being said about an education crisis in Waltham Forest – we wanted to question some of the propaganda that was circulated by proponents of the new Free School.

 

But also to start a debate about what was happening to our school system in the borough – perhaps there is an education crisis in Waltham Forest – but if so, what is it?

 

1. Demographic timebomb:

When WFDSS was set up it was response to a proposal to set up a Free School, run by Oasis and WSSI. One of the things that was claimed in their propaganda was the statement ‘there is a demographic timebomb in the borough’ and the familiar refrain – ‘there is no alternative, we must have this new school’.

Yet it was quickly apparent to us that there were serious problems with their propaganda.

Firstly, Oasis and WSSI were using different figures to illustrate demand in the borough and not even the most authoritative. We suspected fearmongering.

 

One of the things we wanted to do when we set up the campaign was to have a proper look at that and start a proper debate about whether there is a demographic timebomb – to get beneath their propaganda and get a more nuanced debate in the borough.

So we looked at only figures available and they showed something quite interesting.

They showed a very large bulge in reception age children, peaking in 2014/15 and 2015/16 and then falling year on year. Demand drops substantially and is not projected to be a permanent feature.

These probably aren’t the latest figures and the Council will know better, but the fact is that these figures are more comprehensive and authoritative than any used by Oasis and WSSI, they have never been challenged by Oasis/WSSI nor have they been acknowledged or any other data used. So we think there is more than a bit of fearmongering going on here.

 

These figures are also important for another reason, and I’ll come back to that...

 

2. Second, we wanted to raise the issue of the Free Schools in the borough:

It seemed to us, for example, that not everyone who signed up to Oasis’s consultation knew what they were signing up for, and they certainly weren’t told in the consultation document – the website, for example, only asks you if you want a new school.

 

We wanted to try to make sure that people who signed up for a new school knew what they would be getting.

 

Here are some facts about Free Schools.

 

This is something that is sold as being about local people getting up and doing it for themselves, addressing problems of the demand for school places in deprived areas.

 

But that’s not what’s happening.

What’s happening is that the proposals for Free Schools are disproportionately from religious organisations – 39 out of 102 proposals identified last year, for example. People like Oasis.


Oasis, for example, like to claim that they are not really a religious school and that it’s particular to their ethos that no one will be discriminated against. Yet at the same time the Oasis ethos is described as being Christianity in action, it is said to pervade everything that goes on in their schools, Christian materials are openly promoted amongst the teaching staff and staff are expected to demonstrate their understanding of Oasis’s ethos. Confused?

 

Oasis are also a growing education chain like Ark, E-Act and Harris, the same chains that are dominating private academy sponsorship.

 

Free Schools are disproportionately being set up in more affluent, middle class areas – only 2% of Free school pupils in Tower Hamlets claim Free School meals, compared with a borough average of 48%.

 

Some Free Schools are operating covert selection criteria, like setting their catchment areas around certain more affluent postcodes or application forms that weed out certain kinds of applicants.

The fact is that these schools fuel religious and social segregation.

 

In both Sweden and the US, where large-scale experiments with this kind of school have been conducted, research indicates that there has been little or no educational benefit to these schools, but that segregation has definitely increased.

 

And they are more expensive. It is more expensive to start and maintain a new small school than it is to expand an existing school. The start up costs of new Free schools have used up large amounts of capital carved out for them by the government out of existing schools’ capital budgets. And contrary to the myth that small is best, analysis suggests that results overall are better in larger than in smaller schools.

So these schools increase social and religious segregation and they are inefficient.

 

But they are also the wrong solution to the real problem – which is how do we effectively and fairly cater for growing, and possibly later falling, demand?

 

Because they are outside local authority control, even more than academies, they can set their own catchment areas and operate covert selection criteria, they can avoid paying national pay scales for and qualification requirements for teachers, and most importantly of all, they have to maintain a surplus, regardless of what the level of demand in the local area.

 

If the demand for places does fall in the way shown in the Council projections, then the Free School will start to operate parasitically within the borough, sucking resources from our existing local authority schools.

 

And there is nothing that you or I or our elected representatives in the Local Authority can do about it because the school is outside democratic control.

 

For all the pious guff about being part of a ‘family’ of schools, or a ‘hub’, these are unaccountable schools, operating parasitically in our communities.

 

Local authorities do lots of things wrong and they are desperately under-resourced at the moment. But they can still play a critical role in coordinating school provision. They did this last year, for example, dealing with the bulge in demand for primary school places in London through collaboration and coordination within and across boroughs.

With Free Schools that’s impossible. And there are already areas where they are sucking resources from local authority schools. It’s true of academies too, but it’s even more true with Free Schools.

 

All this is hardly a surprise of course.

 

They are the brainchild of a government that believes that competition is a creatively destructive force.

 

It’s not ‘unfortunate’ if a school goes to the wall, for Michael Gove and his cronies. It’s an example of the discipline of the market working.

 

It’s a policy that is part of a plan to roll back all the democratic achievements of the post-war period, at one and the same time, sending us back to the period of church schools, grammar schools and elementary schools for the poor, but with a 21^st century twist of allowing US based education businesses to work them for profit.

 

That’s not scaremongering. It’s happened in the US, where the Charter Schools movement, originally sold as solutions based on parent power, are now  dominated by for-profit Education Management Organisations, companies who are very close to and have had publicly documented discussions with Michael Gove and David Willetts about how they can break into the UK market.

 

3. There is an alternative

 

There’s always an alternative. It’s not easy and the government doesn’t want this but there is a different way of doing this. And it could be done, with sufficient political pressure.

 

Last year, the Local Authorities in London catered to the demand for primary school places through a coordinated response, working collaboratively with their schools to expand capacity. They had support from the Mayor’s office.

 

It could be done again. It would take a lot of work, but it could be done again, if there was sufficient political pressure.

 

One of the reasons we set up our petition was to give people the opportunity to get behind a local authority led solution and create some of that political pressure.

 

We wanted to give support to our Local Authority in making the case that it could cater to expansion without a new Free School, a rogue, parasitic element in the borough.

 

I don’t want to go on much longer, but I want to say a few words about where next.

 

In terms of the specific campaign against Free Schools – at least one, Oasis, have their preapproval and now consultation. We will aim to apply the maximum democratic pressure possible on this consultation and to make sure that the proposal gets as hard a time as possible and as much publicity as possible.

 

But, we have to be hard-nosed and think about what next. And this, I think goes for academies too.

 

We may win, or we may not. At a very practical level, there has to be life after a failed fight. We can’t just become demoralised

 

But that requires people to have a shared common sense of the direction of travel.

 

I think the basis for this exists.

 

Most people don’t want a Free School. Most people don’t want an academy. They DO want a good community school.

Most people believe that everyone has the right to the same level of access they have and only resort to climbing over others’ heads when that feels scarce.

 
Most people understand that local authorities and democratically accountable bodies would be better at coordinating a fair system of provision in the borough than a chaotic struggle among competing schools.

 

Most educationalists agree that the best way to raise the quality of schools is to invest in teaching and teachers, not to attack their pay, terms and conditions and pensions and pitch schools in a race to the bottom.

What’s being done to our education system in Waltham Forest and nationally, raises profound questions about choice – supposedly the heart of the government’s programme – and democracy.

 

Personally, I think the basis exists for those who believe in a broadly progressive, fair and equal education to unite, not just around campaigns to defend schools where they are still under democratic control, but to take the fight to those which are outside it.

 

I think we need to start to build mass democratic local pressure on academies and free schools where they exist.

 

To bring themselves closer into line with democratic ideas of a good quality school,

To work with the local authority,

 

To pay their teachers properly,

 

To be transparent and publicly accountable and to open up their access policies.

 

All this is fair and democratic and it would also send a clear message to those people looking in the near future to making a profit out of our schools that we won’t let them.

To conclude:

I think there is a crisis of Education in Waltham Forest. But it’s not really a crisis of demand or supply – it’s a democratic crisis. It’s a crisis engendered by government and exploited by opportunistic carpet baggers who want to colonise our school system and turn it to their own ends and roll back the seismic achievements of the post-war period.

The only response is for local and national bodies of progressive people to come together around long-sighted campaigns that defend what we still have but which ultimately aim to return education to being a democratic right, a democratic tool and a democratic system.

 

I hope that WFDSS will be part of that process in our borough.