Free Schools – An idea with a short future?

 

It is quite possible that the entire Free Schools movement could grind to a halt after 2015, depending on which way the election goes. Defenders of state schools and comprehensive education have been putting pressure on the Labour Party in particular to declare its hand and rule out any prospect of allowing schools to run for a profit or the approval of any more Free Schools. Many have argued for bringing them all quickly back into the regulated government sector, placing them under local authorities, or imposing some kind of democratic control.

In his recent speech, which you can read about here, Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls indicated that he might simply turn off the tap. As we’ve noted before on this site, Free Schools are comparatively expensive to set up and take a disproportionate share of the funding pot available for education. Because they are the product of an effective conspiracy between vocal and well-resourced private organisations and a government bent on destroying public services, very frequently they are not set up or built where the need is greatest. For this reason, it seems, Ed Balls has indicated that he might not fund any future Free Schools.

We’ve urged everyone who wants to ensure that the real issues of school supply in Waltham Forest are really tackled to get behind a solution that puts the maximum pressure on schools, local government and central government to provide this supply through expansion of our existing schools. It looks possible that Labour are thinking along similar lines.

Coming to a Free School near you… Swedish school chain goes bust

While those supporting the four free schools who received the rubber stamp of approval from Michael Gove were still celebrating, news broke that one of the biggest chains of Swedish Free Schools was selling 19 of its schools and closing four more, leaving hundreds of pupils with no school. JB schools made the announcement after the private equity fund that backed it, Axcel, announced it was no longer prepared to cover the company’s losses and was pulling out. The Guardian covered this story here.
 
Why is this important to the people of Walthamstow?

1. The government’s Free Schools legislation was designed to create opportunities for people to set up schools on precisely the Swedish model and that of the Charter Schools movement in the USA.

2. Michael Gove is in favour of schools being able to run for a profit and this is likely to form part of the Conservatives’ manifesto in 2015.

3. Free Schools and Academies, being independent of local authorities and government, but being in receipt of taxpayers’ money, will be ripe for profit-seeking companies to take over.

4. This is precisely what happened in Sweden and the USA, where Free and Charter Schools were quickly bought up by these chains, particularly when they got into financial trouble.

5. Private equity funds (essentially, groups of super-rich people who have devised a clever way of sucking profits out of companies and public services by loading them with debt, cutting costs and selling assets) have many friends in the Coalition government and have been lobbying for opportunities to profit from the UK education ‘market’.

In the Guardian article above, a Swedish politician is quoted warning the UK about following their route:

"Before you do something like this you have to really, really think about how you set up the system," he said. "The system here is not working as it's supposed to work. Nobody could foresee that so many private equity companies would be in our school system as we have today."

Some might quarrel with the idea that no one could have foreseen the attractions of privatised schools for private equity funds, but the essential message is undisputable. We can’t say we weren’t warned.   

 

Four new Free Schools for Walthamstow…and no, nobody asked you

Last week it was confirmed that Walthamstow will have four new Free Schools. The Education Secretary Michael Gove, has been sufficiently reassured by the information provided to him by, er, the people proposing to open these schools, to give them the government’s seal of approval.

As we reported, the two proposals we knew about were the subject of precious little, if any, public debate and almost no scrutiny. Two other proposals were effectively secrets until they were approved. This is a travesty of democracy which is made even more unacceptable by the fact that we’re talking about children’s education here.

It cannot be right that people, organisations and companies who want to open schools can effectively conspire in secret to win government approval for their proposals, while shutting out the very people who will be paying for them.

If you get a chance to express your view of the specific proposals at all, it will only be now that the government has given them the go ahead.

Supporters of WFDSS made their views on this farcical and scandalous process known in the local press here. We’d like to know what you think, so feel free to comment by emailing us at wfdefendstateschools@gmail.com or using the comment box below.

“It’s consultation Jim, but not as we know it” – the inverted world of Free Schools

WFDSS has now received letters from both Oasis and Tauheedul Free Schools in response to our ‘democratic challenge’. Our letter to both organisations did three things:

• It sought details of what consultation had taken place with the community prior to both organisations submitting their proposals to the DfE
• It set out what we expected both organisations to do to show that they were consulting in a meaningful way with all the stakeholders in our community.
• It called on them to confirm how they were going to meet this expectation.

The basic point is that the minimum that citizens in a democratic society should be able to expect of anyone who intends to set up a school is that the people doing it can demonstrate that they have taken into account the impact their proposal on the community, on the other schools in the borough and the local area.

The responses are very revealing about the strange, inverted world of Free Schools.

Oasis’s reply asks us to post the letter in full for all our supporters to see, so here it is. It contains no details either of past or future intentions over consultation. Instead, the letter says,

“I am writing to advise you that a full response will be made after we have heard whether our application for the proposed new school has been approved by the Department for Education. We are expecting this announcement to be made in the next few weeks; it may be after the 10 May 2013 deadline stipulated in your letter.”

Tauheedul’s response, which you can read at the bottom, is similarly unenlightening. Vague claims are made about the past consultation and about intentions to consult in the future but without concrete details. Tauheedul claim they have been

“actively working with members of the local community for over 18 months. During this time, we have engaged in a regular dialogue and consultation with a whole range of individual and community stakeholders, including the Local Authority and local residents. We have taken on board their comments, aspirations and concerns in developing our proposal for the 'Waltham Forest Leadership Academy for Girls' that is currently being considered by the Department for Education. We are aware of our obligations regarding statutory consultation. Should we receive initial approval from the DfE, the current plans are to engage in a comprehensive consultation between June and July 2013. The detailed plans will be on our website www.tauheedulschools.com.”

In sum, both organisations are distinctly vague and evasive about their past consultation. Tauheedul’s statement, for example, talks about ‘a whole range of individual and community stakeholders’ but provides no details, nor does it mention schools. Neither organisation makes any effort to commit to meet our expectations. We will be pursuing the claims made in Tauheedul’s statement, in particular. This is not as easy as it might sound. Interestingly, a google search on Tauheedul's proposed 'Waltham Forest Leadership Academy for Girls' produces only the document at the DfE that lists applications received. There is no other information about the proposal available via the internet.

But the crux of the issue would appear to be this. The Department for Education is going to make a judgment about whether these school proposals should be approved without any publicly available evidence of any meaningful consultation or impact assessment.

If full details of the two applications are not made public until after the DfE gives approval, in what meaningful sense can the DfE decision be said to take account of informed local concerns? How can the DfE show that it is aware of any concerns raised by the community in deciding whether to approve the school or not?

Secondly, if comprehensive and consultation follows DfE approval, can any consultation launched fulfil the statutory obligation to consult on the question of ‘whether’ there will be a free school or not, or will it in effect be about how an already approved free school is set-up? How can consultation be said to be at a formative stage when the proposal has been approved by the DfE?

The government seems to have designed a profoundly anti-democratic system for setting up new schools. A government department makes decisions that will have a deep impact on our local schools without any evidence of any democratic process, either formal or informal and we cannot hold them accountable. Organisations wishing to set up a new school appear to feel under no obligation to hold any meaningful consultation, take account of the impact of their proposals or uphold the basic standards of transparency and accountability required of other public bodies.

If or when the Department sees fit to pronounce on the proposals they have in front of them from Oasis and Tauheedul, people in Waltham Forest who have concerns about Free Schools, academies, government education policies, increasing segregation or even just basic democracy will have to make their voices heard, because the system appears to have been designed not to listen.

***

 
Tauheedul’s response, dated 12 May 2013:

Dear Jonathan,

 

Thank you for your e-mail.

 

 

We appreciate the time that you have taken out in learning about our project.

As you may be aware we have been actively working with members of the local community for over 18 months. During this time, we have engaged in a regular dialogue and consultation with a whole range of individual and community stakeholders, including the Local Authority and local residents.

We have taken on board their comments, aspirations and concerns in developing our proposal for the 'Waltham Forest Leadership Academy for Girls' that is currently being considered by the Department for Education.

We are aware of our obligations regarding statutory consultation. Should we receive initial approval from the DfE, the current plans are to engage in a comprehensive consultation between June and July 2013. The detailed plans will be on our websitewww.tauheedulschools.com.

We have looked at your website and do share your aspirations for greater choice and a better standard of education in Waltham Forest. We hope that all members of the community can work together to address these challenges in the coming years.

Fiona McGrath

Waltham Forest Leadership Academy for Girls

London’s school places crisis (and how academies and free schools are not helping)

Last week saw the publication of a very interesting and hard-hitting report from London Councils, the body that lobbies central government and the Mayor of London on behalf of the capital’s Local Authorities.

The message of ‘Do the Maths’, which made it to the front page of the Evening Standard, was stark enough. London is facing a shortfall of 118,000 primary and secondary school places up until 2016/7. It accounts for 42% of the total shortfall in England, yet it is only receiving 36% of the capital allocation it needs for 2013 and 2014.

The report says, ‘schools need to be expanded and new ones built’. Yet London’s funding settlement for schools is only for one year, making effective planning of provision very difficult, especially as it takes at least 18 months to build a new school.

The report makes an impassioned plea for an improved capital funding formula that fully recognises London’s unique pressure and for longer funding cycles to enable proper investment and planning.

The document needs to be seen for what it is, a lobbying document designed to put pressure on central government to relax the funding environment. But the problems are real enough.

It might be thought that this was meat and drink to the advocates of new Free Schools in Waltham Forest, for example. But things aren’t quite so straightforward.

In an interesting passage near the end of the document, the report notes that ‘there are currently 229 secondary academies within London – this represents over half of all secondary schools in the capital. This affects where local authorities can expand capacity as academies are under no obligation to expand as they are outside local authority control. In the case of free schools [effectively the same as academies in this case – outside local authority control, ed.] the challenge will be to ensure that their location best supports areas where there is a particular pressure on places’ (p. 9)

There are two interesting things here:

1. Academies are making things worse. Operating outside of local authority control, they can act independently in what they see as their own interest, regardless of the wider social need. There’s nothing the Local Authorities can do about this. And as noted above, building more free schools will simply aggravate this.

2. The local authorities identify it as a challenge to ensure that free schools are built in the right places. That decision is not made by the local authority but by the sponsors and the Department of Education.

And the evidence suggests that free schools are not being built in the right places. Indeed the Local Schools Network has revealed many instances of free schools being built in places where there are surplus places. In addition to which these schools are getting favourable treatment in terms of capital funding, while the capital’s established community schools are starved.

In the same week that the London Councils report was published, the Public Accounts Committee published its own report into the Department of Education’s spending on the academies programme and it was scathing.

The PAC found that a £1 billion overspend on the academies programme was caused by the ‘excessively complex and inefficient academy funding system’. £400 million had been taken out of funds earmarked for intervention in underperforming schools and spent instead on funding academy conversion, even where the schools in question were already Good or Outstanding (Thomas Gamuel, anyone?). The committee was also deeply concerned about the lack of accountability of academies. Even Tory MP Richard Bacon said that the lack of transparency in spending, especially in chains like Oasis, was ‘mind-blowing’.

So, to summarise. We have a genuine shortage of places that could be tackled by an expansion of existing local authority schools and the building of new schools. This would be most efficiently done by building local authority schools which could be expanded or contracted according to need and which could be allocated to the areas where need is greatest (as argued on this site, here).

Instead, government policy means that money will be wasted on converting schools to academies and building free schools wherever people shout the loudest, increasing the number of schools competing against one another and entirely outside of local authority control.

It looks as though the government is more intent on smashing up the democratically accountable comprehensive system than tackling the very real issues of provision in London and our children are to pay the price.

A democratic challenge to Oasis and Tauheedul

WFDSS has today written to both Oasis Community Learning and Tauheedul Free Schools asking them to set out for the local community what steps they will be taking to hold a meaningful public consultation in the borough.

 

The questions we ask below relate to the normal expectations on any body that is expected to hold a consultation and are particularly relevant to those who are applying to run a public service in return for public funding.

 

This is even more important given the fact that as this website has shown, there are significant and substantial concerns about the impact of these proposals on the local community, from parents, teachers , local councillors and from the local MP. 

 

We believe that Oasis and Tauheedul must show that they take these concerns seriously by holding a public, transparent and meaningful consultation along the lines laid out below.

 

OPEN LETTER TO OASIS AND TAUHEEDUL FREE SCHOOLS:

 

We are writing and publishing this open letter to you further to your application to set up an additional ‘Free School’ in Waltham Forest.

We are an organisation of local parents, teachers and other residents of Waltham Forest called Waltham Forest Defend State Schools. We came together to defend and promote our community schools and to promote a better understanding in the borough of the issues around proposals to build new Free Schools and to convert community schools to Academies.

This letter asks you to set out for the people of Waltham Forest the steps you will be taking to undertake a wide and meaningful consultation to ensure that your proposal properly reflects the needs of the people of the borough.

Under section 10 of the Academies Act, you have a duty to consult such persons as you think appropriate. We are sure that you would agree with us that a list of the appropriate persons in the case of a new school in Waltham Forest would contain, as a minimum, the local authority, parents and teachers at all schools which might potentially be affected by your proposal, together with the general public in the borough.

As you will be aware, in order to be lawful, a consultation must comply with the following overarching obligations:

1. Consultation must take place at a time when the proposals are at a formative stage

2. The proposer must give sufficient reasons for its proposals to allow consultees to understand them and respond to them properly.

3. Consulters must give sufficient time for responses to be made and considered.

4. Responses must be conscientiously taken into account in finalising the decision.

In order to ensure that your proposals are subjected to appropriate democratic scrutiny, we are calling on you to set out for us how you intend to do this. Specifically, we are calling on you to provide the following information:

Prior to submitting your initial proposal to the DfE:

• what steps did you take to consult with the Local Authority in Waltham Forest and neighbouring boroughs that might be affected by your proposal?
• What steps did you take to consult the headteachers and teachers representative bodies in schools in Waltham Forest and neighbouring boroughs?
• What steps were taken to consult with parents in the borough?
• When will the results of these consultations be made public?

Subsequent to submitting your initial proposal to the DfE:

· What is your timetable for publishing your full proposal and consulting on it, prior to submitting a final proposal to the DfE?

• What are your plans for consulting with the following: the Local Authority, headteachers and the representative organisations of teachers in schools in Waltham Forest and neighbouring boroughs; parents at schools which might be affected by your proposal and the general public in the borough?
• What will be the timetable for the submission of responses to this consultation?
• What are your plans for publishing the results of the consultation and showing that you have given reasonable consideration of the variety of responses you receive, prior to submitting to the DfE?

We are sure that you would want to demonstrate both to the people of Waltham Forest and the Education Secretary, who must show that he has considered the impact of your proposal, that you have fully and transparently consulted in a manner that is appropriate to an organisation which intends to receive public funding.

We look forward to your response as soon as possible, and in any case not later than 10 May.

Jonathan White

Scarlet Harris

Mark Holding

Tom Davies

Waltham Forest Defend State Schools
Learn more about us here: http://defendwalthamforeststateschools.blogspot.co.uk/

“The only form of new school I would actively support would be a Cooperative Trust school” - Stella Creasy’s position on new schools in Walthamstow

Following a correspondence with supporters of Waltham Forest Defend State Schools, our local MP Stella Creasy has written to us with a statement that clarifies her position. The statement is copied in full and unedited, at her request, below. If you want to read it ahead of our comment, skip to the bottom now.

Here a few immediate observations.

Firstly, her message also makes clear her view that the government will not allow a new local community school to be built in Walthamstow. This is not in itself news. We have acknowledged this all along. However, disappointingly, she doesn’t address the possibility that the shortfall could be addressed by expanding existing schools, nor the fact that there is good evidence that this would be preferable in educational terms to building a new smaller school. In fact, publicly-available data show the forecast shortfall of secondary school places in the Borough as equivalent to 10 classes by 2016/17. This can be solved by expansion of our current Ofsted-rated  'good' or 'outstanding' secondary schools.'

Secondly, it is very significant that Stella states clearly that she will only give her active support to a Co-Operative Trust school. This is important because a Co-operative school is a very different model of school to either a Free School or an Academy. Co-op schools are founded on a Trust model that locks in community assets and gives a more democratic say to a school’s many stakeholders. This is very different from a Free School or an Academy in which the private sponsor appoints the majority of each school's governing body, and where academies are often closely supervised from head office. See this article for more details: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/aug/15/cooperative-schools-antidote-academies-independent

A co-operative school has a weaker relationship to local authorities than a community school but it would be markedly superior in protecting the interests of the community, parents and teachers to the kind of top-down, privatised schooling offered by either an Academy or a Free school.

Supporters of our community schools will have a range of views on Co-Operative Trust Schools, but it is apparent from this that our MP is not actively supporting either of the Free School proposals. We thank her for making this clear.

Here is Stella’s statement in full:

“The data regarding school places provided by the local authority creates a compelling case that Walthamstow faces a substantial shortage of school places in our area within the next few years- as those involved in the 1200 places campaign will be aware, Walthamstow residents have sought consistently to make the case to the Government that this need should be addressed as a matter of urgency to ensure that no child who lives in Walthamstow is without the opportunity of education in their local environment.

Since 2010 this case has become stronger, not weaker. The growth of the population not just in Walthamstow but in our city as a whole combined with changes to benefits and housing costs are bringing more people to our area and will continue to do so in the years ahead. If we are to meet the need for school places without compromising standards in existing schools, especially at secondary school level, then Walthamstow will need new schools as well as increased capacity in our existing establishments. Having been on the Education Bill and argued this matter through with the Government ministers as well as lobbied through the 1200 pupils campaign I'm now convinced that the Government will not enable community schools to be built, even to meet such a specific and identified need.

Given the restrictions that this Government has put on the options available to communities to address this need for places, Walthamstow faces some critical choices about the future needs of our children. Under the current legislation as the local MP I have no authority to promote or prevent any new schools, as approval for such provision will be the decision of the Department for Education alone. However, given how important this issue is for the future of provision and educational standards in Walthamstow I will continue to seek to meet with, work with and hold to account all those who are active in planning for educational provision in our area. To do otherwise risks failing our local young people who need these places and should be our prime concern as well as wasting vital public resources. I will also continue to seek to work with our existing local schools and the local authority in promoting school standards in our area.

In addition to this, as both a Labour and Co-operative MP I am passionate about the role of all stakeholders in education- pupils, parents, teachers, governors and the wider community. That is why in approaching the debates around the future structures of education in our community and the provision of new schools in our area, I have been clear that the only form of new school I would actively support would be a Cooperative Trust school. I have set out this test to all those who have approached me seeking help- both to create new schools as well as oppose them- and will continue to promote these values.

I recognise there are strong views as to the benefits and shortcomings of various models for school provision. The reality and urgency for all those who care about the future attainment of young people in Walthamstow is that we cannot avoid the question of how best to ensure we have the school places to the standards our children need in our community. I therefore welcome the commitment of all those in our local community to engaging in this question and the passion that they show for the educational attainment of all local children. I hope others will do the same.”

Stella Creasy