National Union of Mineworkers in the 1980s. Coming out of Waiting for Superman, the film about US charter schools, in late November last year, Toby Young tweeted, ‘Just saw Waiting For Superman. Spellbinding indictment of teachers unions. Made by director of Inconvenient Truth. Oh happy days.’
Claims that it is the teachers’ unions who use bullying tactics were a little strained by one revelation in January 2011: it emerged that Lord Hill, the minister responsible for academies, had strongly hinted to schools interested in converting to academy status that the government might turn down their request, if the school chose to abide by national pay agreements for teachers—prompting the unions to consider legal action.26 ‘It’s like tanks rolling over your lawn … while government ministers are polite and charming in private,’ observed Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers in spring 2011. ‘There’s never any ceasefire; there’s never a chance to map out the lie of the land—they just carry on, and they are going to be left with many unintended consequences.’
There are some important silences, however. Probably the most significant development in the new schools revolution is the massively expanded role it will give to the private sector, a path partially cleared under New Labour with its city academy programme, encouraging private sponsors and charitable bodies into state education. Several companies already run schools in England, and many more provide important services to them. With the new free schools and academies, the door is wide open to the expansion of the market. Yet one would scarcely know it from public debate on education. Unsurprisingly, little reference is made by any of the new school celebrities or politicians to the growing private control of public education, or to the cost of this to the taxpayer who is, in effect, underwriting the latest round of privatisation of state education.
The government has continued, if with rather less conviction, to promote the idea that free schools represent the authentic voice of the people. The Department for Education website broadcasts a number of videos promoting the educational aims and vision of successful bidders. These short, artful films project a compelling picture of ordinary, decent parents and teachers working hard to create good schools, denied to them by a mix of local state bureaucrats and egalitarian ideologues. What these films do not dwell on is the role of the private sector in much of the free school movement, nor the extent to which many of the new school campaigns are dividing communities. Increasingly, free schools are like the educational equivalent of fireworks: random, concentrated explosions that appear to come out of nowhere, startling and polarising communities, alienating as many parents, teachers, school leaders and governors as they attract.
A new free school planned for Wandsworth, South London, the Bolingbroke Academy—sponsored by ARK, the academy chain—quickly became known as the ‘bankers’ free school’, as its supporters included a number of bankers working for various City firms including Morgan Stanley and Barclays. Plans for the new school were strongly opposed by many local parents and teachers as well as by local representatives of the GMB trade union who, in an unusual intervention, accused the free school group of deliberately excluding one of the local primaries that served a markedly less affluent community, as a ‘feeder school’—that is, a primary with special links to a local secondary. The Bolingbroke conflict was given the deceptively light-hearted tag of The Battle of Nappy Valley. Eventually, the whole intractable matter was put out to ‘consultation’. Similarly, a planned free school in Stoke by Nayland in Suffolk drew protests from a local head who believed it was being designed to siphon off the wealthier families of the area. Mike Foley, head of Great Cornard Upper School, said: ‘The suspicion is that parents in that [free school] group don’t want our children mixing with oiks. Whatever the motivation, the impact of it is to create this division. Although we have children from diverse backgrounds, they flourish here. The view here is that children shouldn’t be educated in a bubble.’27
Meanwhile, several ailing private schools, and ambitious religious groups, were clamouring to come under the shelter of the state’s umbrella. In January 2011, it was announced that 25 Steiner schools, whose curriculum has a humanistic, artistic emphasis, were in talks with the government about becoming free schools; but elements of the Steiner ideology remain highly controversial, and the decision was thus delayed.28 Seven out of ten free-school applications register a faith-based ethos. The Everyday Champions Church in Newark, an Evangelical church in Nottingham which intends to teach creationism as part of its science curriculum, handed over its plans for a 625-place school on the day before the first ever free school conference in January 2011, where Gove declared that ‘applications’ from creationist groups would be considered, with each judged on its merits. But only a few weeks later, after insistent representations from the British Centre for Science Education, Gove appeared to back down, claiming that it was ‘crystal-clear that teaching creationism is at odds with scientific fact’.
Free-school development has been increasingly constrained by practical factors. As many had warned, setting up a school is a major venture; those who have made it through the various stages have mostly done so with the backing of a charitable body or an existing education provider, although occasionally an individual like Young, who wields unusual political and public influence, appears to manage it alone. By May 2011, a year after the formation of the Coalition, only four groups had entered into a funding agreement, or contract, with the secretary of state—the West London Free School in Hammersmith and Fulham, Eden Primary School in Haringey, St Luke’s Church of England Primary School in Camden, and The Free School in Norwich—giving the lie to predictions that between ten and twenty would open in September 2011. Altogether, 323 groups had applied to start free schools. Of these applications, forty-one had been approved to the business case and planning stage, and seventeen to the pre-opening stage. Early criticisms of the apparent ease with which free school applications were approved had forced the government to slow down the process. Andrew Nadin, for example, an energetic opponent of a free school proposal in Bedford and Kempston, had persistently raised questions concerning a petition the Bedford and Kempston group had presented to the Department of Education claiming to show widespread support for the establishment of another school in the area. In the early summer of 2011 rumours began to circulate that Gove was trying to persuade school leaders in one London borough to back the establishment of a new free school, instead of another academy—a sign, surely, of the minister’s realisation that his flagship policy was faltering.
And who was paying for the new schools? There were rumoured plans in the summer of 2010 that the free school meals budget was to be raided to pay for free schools. Not surprisingly, this proposal was soon ditched. The government then suggested that free schools were to be largely funded from a special IT fund. The cost of free schools and the new academies became a more pressing issue as cuts announced in the Comprehensive Spending Review started to bite. The entire project began to look decidedly less exciting, and potentially offensive, as existing state schools battled with leaking classrooms and cuts in one-to-one tuition. Many teenagers were facing a bleak future, without the financial support of EMA in the sixth form, and the prospect of soaring tuition fees. According to a report on Radio 4’s Today programme in early 2011, the Department had set aside £50 million in capital funding when the policy was first announced. But Today revealed that Bolingbroke, the planned free school in Wandsworth, was costing a total of £28 million in public money: £13 million from Wandsworth Council, to buy the building, plus £15 million of public money to refurbish it. According to Toby Young’s own estimates, the capital costs of the West London Free School were to be £12 million. While parliamentary questions and Freedom of Information requests did not elicit much hard information, it was revealed in April 2011 that the government had spent £21 million in its first year alone to private consultants to help launch the free school policy; at the same time, almost 100 civil servants were being directly employed on the policy. According to Labour’s shadow education secretary, Andy Burnham: ‘Pledges are being made; ministers are going round the country waving cheque books at people wanting to set up their pet projects. When the Government have cancelled Building Schools for the Future, it is unacceptable that they are not prepared to answer parliamentary questions to tell us how much money has been committed to these new schools. It gives the impression that, shamefully, ideology and not need is driving
