A Free School for some – paid for by all

By Jim Sweetman / @jimbo9848

The coalition celebrated a landmark in education last week. The DFE gave formal approval to the first free school in England and saw one of Michael Gove’s first ambitions realised. This is a school which is beyond local authority control, operated by the community and free to do things differently. Surprisingly, it is not in West London where Toby Young’s Range Rover Academy is scheduled for approval any day soon but, instead, is in rural England in deepest Suffolk and in the pretty village of Clare.

Sounds good doesn’t it? Michael Gove must already be pencilled in for the opening ceremony so what is it really going to offer its first intake of students? First of all, there are not going to be very many of them. They’re talking about fewer than a hundred pupils in each of the first three year groups. Well, if you are the parent or child you might like this cosy environment and the opportunity not to travel ten miles on the bus to school in Haverhill but it is worth thinking about the price you have to pay as well.

This is going to be a very small 11-16 secondary school. It will not be able to offer a varied curriculum; it will be short of laboratory space for science, computer terminals, and workshops for technology. It is unlikely to be able to pay the salaries of skilled faculty heads and teachers are likely to be teaching more than one subject. It is going to use the expanded middle school buildings which are already on the site and designed for children from the ages of 9 to 13. Of course, it will be showered with money – around £4.5 million – to meet the shortfalls and will have a posh new name – Stour Valley Community School – but it won’t be ideal.

The fact that this is a middle school site is pivotal in explaining why the free school is opening at all. Over the past few years, Suffolk local authority has been moving away from middle schools and in the direction of 11+ secondary schools. Part of the reason for this lies in the national curriculum which assumes subject specialism from age 11 but it is also related to school league tables where the crucial key stage two tests take place in the last year of primary school. Suffolk has one more reason. There has been a decline in the school population and rationalisation makes sense because many small middle schools have ceased to be viable in the sense that they cost a lot of money and don’t deliver good educational outcomes for their children. Parents anywhere do not like school closures and there is a lot of emotion attached to the closing of village schools. However, when education spending is being limited it makes sense to spend it wisely.

What the local authority was offering Clare was a primary school running to 11 and then places for its pupils in Haverhill or Sudbury. This might be played as some awful scenario where nice village pupils are pushed into the urban sprawl of an overspill town comprehensive and that has gone down well with some elements of the media – but the truth is quite the opposite. Samuel Ward School in Haverhill is a big school but it is also highly successful. It is ranked as ‘outstanding by OFSTED, achieves excellent results for its pupils and has been led for many years by a headteacher nominated as a national leader in education for exceptional leadership. It is even to become one of the coalition’s new academies. It offers a diverse curriculum, an extraordinary range of additional activities coupled with good behaviour and excellent target setting and rewards. It is, of course, where most of the children from the free school will continue their education at 16. Let’s hope they’re not too far behind their peers by then…

Of course you might argue that if Clare wants its own school and the community are going to run it then why shouldn’t they have it in an era of libertarian conservatism? The answer is money and equality and it is not Clare’s money but the taxpayers. The free school will probably cost closer to £5 than £4 million to set up and will then, eventually, create an additional five hundred secondary school places so that there is a surplus in south Suffolk. It may also attract pupils from over the border in Essex so it will play havoc with educational planning there as well.

It will set itself up as ‘traditional’ and because it is in a small village with incomes well above the norm it will be implicitly selective as it will rely on children from outside the village being transported there by parents. A free school like this does not exist in a bubble. It impacts on education across a wide reaching area. It gives more choice to some parents but takes away the rights of others to have their children taught in genuinely comprehensive schools. The Stour Valley Community School may well be the fulfilment of the community’s dream but it is also the next step in an ideological attack on maintained education.