If parents are so fed up with the quality of their local schools, they should
stop complaining, get off their backsides and start their own. That’s
effectively what Michael Gove, shadow children’s secretary, has announced,
claiming that a Conservative government would kick-start improvement in
failing education authorities by inviting parents to set up their own
schools.
But when Gove explained how parents might go about doing it last week on the
BBC Radio 5 breakfast show most listeners who texted in were highly
sceptical.
Next to the political question of, “Don’t we pay taxes for the government to
provide schools?” stands the practical one of whether parents have the time
to do it.
How long would it take for these notional “Cameroonian communitari-ans” to
conceive, campaign for, fund, build, staff and open their own secondary
school? As most parents would be largely motivated by the education of their
own children, surely by the time such an enterprise was up and running their
own juveniles would have already transferred to secondary school?
If my experience is any guide that may be true but, even so, it might still be
a priceless investment of time and energy. At the parish church of St Mary
Magdalene on Holloway Road in London last Wednesday two dozen year 7 pupils
were belting out a new school anthem in a mixture of Zulu and English.
Conducting the piece, which he had written especially for them, was Hugh
Masekela, the South African jazz trumpeter.
“The great thing about music,” he explained to his newest pupils, “is that you
don’t have to know what language it is in, it touches you whatever language
you speak.”
Rehearsals were in the church because while the St Mary Magdalene academy,
just over the road, opened its doors to pupils only 10 weeks ago,
state-of-the-art music studios and recording equipment aren’t ready until
Christmas. But the fact that this striking building, backed by £40m of
government money, has opened at all, is a tribute to the energy of
successive cohorts of parents who have lobbied the council for two decades.
For the past 12 years I’ve been one of those parents. When my eldest son began
primary school in 1995 I began wondering if the reputation of inner London
boroughs for dismal secondary provision could be quite as bad as popular
lore. It didn’t take much research to confirm the legend: Islington in
particular, despite significant swathes of wealth, rarely hovered far above
the foot of educational league tables. Anecdotal evidence was equally
damning, notably the frequency of having to say goodbye to parents loading
the removals van a year or two before their progeny approached secondary
transfer.
At a wedding reception I buttonholed a well-known new Labour figure with a
child approaching secondary age. I asked to be let in on his doubtless
cunning plan for the educational years ahead. “Er,” he said, looking around
to see who else was in earshot, “we’re just moving to Wandsworth actually,
they’ve got some quite good schools over there.” At the home of another
Labour bigwig, now a prominent supporter of the academies programme, I was
told a campaign for a new school was doomed while there were existing
surplus places. Unfortunately the surplus was in unwanted schools. Of the
families who stayed put, 40% sent their kids outside the borough at
secondary age.
When another parent mentioned a dormant campaign aimed at setting up a Church
of England secondary I discovered that five years before 1,300 people had
petitioned the council. Those parents, with their children, and their
anxiety-fuelled, campaigning passion, had moved on – or out.
Subject to a momentary fit of public service pretension, dizzy from a heady
brew of pragmatism and altruism, I decided to give the campaign the kiss of
life – naively oblivious to the magnitude of dull meetings I would be
consigning myself to for more than a decade. Boredom, it turns out, or at
least attention to the dullest detail, appears to be the road to political
progress. Along with letter writing, leafleting, phone calls, fob-offs and
fundraising. Not forgetting the odd dose of public humiliation.
An ad hoc team of parents, meeting in our living room, decided to try to
persuade the old Labour dinosaurs on the council to swallow their prejudices
about church schools and countenance a new one for secondary pupils.
Its ethos would be Christian but it would be inclusive and nonsectarian,
drawing pupils largely from the immediate locality, with the rest coming
from other church primary schools. It wouldn’t have backdoors marked “middle
class”, its social intake would mirror the local area and it would focus on
achievement and discipline.
The timing appeared auspicious in 1999 when Islington education authority was
inspected by Ofsted and the Audit Commission and judged to be a basket case,
although they used technical language such as “seriously failing”.
Only one in four pupils obtained five GCSEs at grades A*-C, barely half the
national average. Our proposal to reopen the failing George Orwell school as
a church secondary was selected as one of four options, but existing George
Orwell parents hissed and booed us and we were laughed out of the council
chamber at the vote. You are a clique we were told, presenting our petition
of 700 local parents. There’s no demand, they said. Go back to your flat
earth and take your child-molesting priests with you. I may be exaggerating.
Campaigning can foster paranoia.
Parents left our ad hoc group, new ones joined, and by 2000 I had to admit I
had been too ambitious as my eldest left primary school for a good
comprehensive. Outside the borough.
We had become part of the 40%, a key element in explaining the poor standards
in many urban schools. Still, maybe my daughter or youngest son might end up
in our secondary.
But finally local politicians were getting pragmatic – and democratic. Six
years ago I wrote in these pages, about a referendum the Liberal Democrat
council held that found 98% wanted a new secondary, the overwhelming
favourite option being a Church of England school.
That pent-up demand was finally matched with the arrival of Labour’s academy
programme; secondary schools that are largely publicly funded but not
controlled by the local authority.
Sponsored by the London Diocesan Board for Schools, suddenly the council and
the government were on board and the theoretical arguments became practical
and personal.
In a densely built-up inner London borough the only location the council would
agree to site a school was – slightly awkwardly – right on top of the
primary school where I was a governor and my children were pupils. On the
upside an academy would include the primary school and its pupils. On the
downside the existing school would be demolished. Unsurprisingly, it was the
downside that galvanised attention, not just in the local press but at the
school gate where I turned up less frequently to avoid the furious gazes and
occasional furious tongues of parents.
My daughter followed her brother out of the borough but with one child still
in my pack the game was not over. I harboured the foolish hope that it would
still be open in time for him. Or maybe we’d have to have more kids.
Our steering group began meeting in the home of another parent, with a bigger
kitchen table, and now included architects, project managers and even people
with some relevant experience in running schools.
As our numbers and expertise improved so did the volume of opposition: local
householders mortified at the prospect of teenagers passing their doors
morning and evening; primary school parents averse to losing their history
or playground.
More and more mornings were spent with up to 25 strangers – engineers,
architects, civil servants, builders, consultants and council officers.
Usually I had no idea what our meetings were about – cladding, woodchip
boilers, interviewing for heads – and it dawned on me that my specialist
contribution was not specialist at all. It was just longevity.
But from under the rising tide of papers and policies the St Mary Magdalene
academy looked like it might finally happen, maybe even in time for my
youngest. Alas, another delay. A decision by the Office of the Schools
Adjudicator to close the primary school was the subject of a judicial
review. In addition the decision of a fiery meeting of the council planning
committee was threatened with a second judicial review. Building got under
way in the autumn of 2005. My youngest left for secondary a year later, 12
months before the first 430 pupils arrived this September.
Despite the claims down the years that there was no real demand, the academy
is already the most oversubscribed school in the borough. The power of local
parents allied to a sympathetic sponsor may be more potent than most people
recognise. Labour’s academies programme, for all its critics, does offer
scope to respond to parental demand – not least by offering resources to
develop a new educational ethos in a new environment, rather than the more
Herculean task of taking on a failing school.
Parents don’t need to wait for a Cam-eron government to do this, they could be
mobilising already. If they can collaborate, as we have done, with the
governors and head of a successful local primary school, they can take
advantage of an existing ethos and cohort of activist parents – and can
maybe do it more quickly.
It is schools in our urban areas that most need the injection of energy and
passion that parents can offer. Few know better than Masekela quite how
transforming a single educational experience can be.
When he was a child, in and out of trouble, in a township under apart-heid, it
was an English priest, Trevor Huddleston, who visited him when he was ill.
Huddleston asked him what would help him keep out of trouble. “I said,
‘Father, if I could get a trumpet I would never be in trouble again.’ And he
said, ‘Are you sure?’ And I said, ‘Yes’, and so he got me a trumpet and a
trumpet teacher.”
Last week he said: “There is nothing as valuable as a good education and when
we grow up we should not just think about ourselves but about how we can now
make other people’s lives better.” What are you waiting for?
Britain’s top 2,000 schools online
Go to Parent Power
for the full 2007 Sunday Times survey of Britain’s best state and
independent schools. Find all the top secondary, primary and preparatory
schools in your area simply by typing your postcode into our online
database. You can also search by school name, town, region and education
authority. As well as displaying all the recent exam results for each school
there are links on Parent Power to take you straight to the latest
inspection report and the school website
Free Hamlet
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An outstanding 240-minute recording of Hamlet, with Sir John Gielgud. Plus you
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