“Free” schools: free choice for parents?

I used to teach in Kilquhanity,  a real “Free School” set up in 1941 by the visionary Scottish educationalist John Aitkenhead.   His view of Freedom was simple:  ”You are free to jump into the water, but you are not free to stay dry”.  We all need to need to take his advice and think hard about the consequences of our choices.

I was reminded of this today when I heard Paul Carter, Leader of Kent County Council (and one of the Conservatives own), telling the BBC that ordinary state schools will lose out as more “Free” schools and Academies are set up.  Shadow Education Secretary Michael Gove rushed into the Today programme studios to tell us all that Paul Carter was fully behind the Conservatives plans but he was not entirely convincing.  No matter how you do the sums (and Mr Gove did try), it is hard to see how we are going to be in a position to create the extra capacity that the Choice agenda requires against a background of reduced spending.

A few years ago as a governor in my daughters’  failing state primary I could see that things were seriously wrong but, despite the fact that all the parent governors had concerns, we were not listened to by the local authority.  We set up a Parent Council to try to find a constructive way of channelling parental anxieties but again we were ignored.  It was small satisfaction to know that when Ofsted finally arrived and gave the school a damning report, the issues they raised almost exactly mirrored the fifteen key issues which the Parent Council had identified and raised repeatedly with the school management over a three year period.  The good news is that now, two years on, we are no longer in Special Measures and we have a well-run and happy school with a strong and effective Parent Council in place.

But something has been puzzling the new Head.  Whenever we talk about the bad old days she asks us why on earth we did not just take our children out of the school.  The answers are interesting:  because it is our local school, because our other children had attended the school and we felt it was “our” school, because our children had friends there and, perhaps most important of all, because we did not want to simply walk away from a failing school and leave other people’s children to their fate – we had a strong sense that the school could be better and we wanted to help to make it happen.  Many of us had invested our time and energy in the school for many years and we were not willing  going to give upon it just yet.

Reading the manifestos of the three main parties, I am struck by the fact that all of them equate parental choice and involvement with parents wanting to move their children out of existing schools and into new schools and maybe even run those schools themselves. But what if parents don’t actually want a new school let alone one they have to run it themselves?  What if they just want their existing school to be better?  A recent MORI poll found that 62% of those polled thought that local authorities were the best people to run schools.  Only 5% thought parents should be running schools whereas a third thought parents should not be running schools.

Politicians are right to say that people want to make a difference to their communities.  But people have strong loyalties to local institutions.  There may be parents who are desperate to set up new schools in their own image for their offspring but many more of us want to stick with our local community schools that have served our families and communities for years and simply be allowed to contribute to making them better.  It is not a lot to ask and it is surely a better way to spend our money.

Expanding LINks?

Forget the DH site, the place to look for what’s happening in public and service user engagement is increasingly Communities and Local Government (CLG), which is churning out more useful stuff about civic engagement and community participation across the board. But should we welcome this uncritically, especially when it involves LINks? For instance, I noticed this in the most recent Consultation Institute newsletter:

“Gung-ho CLG seems so enthused by LINks that it seems keen to expand the concept beyond health and social care and is inviting Councils to submit proposals. Where this leads is anybody’s guess but the idea of networks of interested stakeholders is a powerful concept.”

Is this an idea linked (no pun intended) with CLG minister Hazel Blears – she of the recent community empowerment white paper and participatory budgeting experiments - to extend LINks straight across everything a Council does?   Sounds like the kind of thing that the ”government in waiting” might be keen on too.  And it is just the sort of development that some Councils might want for the wrong reasons.  A single tick box solution to involvement and consultation based on “we talked to LINk” is appealing but it is reductionist and simplistic.  We should be wary of this expansionist offer at least until we have some solid achievements with LINks in health and social care to point to and much more experience with the methodology of contacting, listening, understanding and transmitting views of local citizens.  But as the CI newsletter rightly says, the idea is powerful and something to think about for the future.

In the meantime here is a just published CLG report on barriers which people feel keep them from being able to influence local decision making.  Quite relevant for LINk and our understanding of participation generally I think. The biggest factor (barrier) is how much people trust their local council – perhaps an obvious conclusion but one that must be addressed where the answer is “not much”.

Readers could also dip into the CLG report on the New Deal for Communities pilots.  It is mercifully short and summarises lots of what we know already – so it provides a good and recent benchmark – about barriers and incentives to participation.  It talks about the “1% solution” we have previously discussed on this blog.   There is an allied report on what works well in communicationswith specific groups in the community.

This is all good stuff for us to know for LINks and Hosts should have these reports on their electronic reading lists.