Cameron Watt: The Education Dividend – in praise of co-operative schools

Thursday was a good day. I awoke from my slumbers to hear the CSJ’s Breakthrough Manchester report leading the news bulletins on Five Live Breakfast. (Aren’t Nicky and Sheelagh great? I could never stomach John Humphrys’ rudeness or Jim Naughtie’s pomposity first thing in the morning.) What’s more, Nicky gave the report a fair hearing, acknowledging Iain Duncan Smith’s serious work on social justice.

Unlike the Labour councillor from Manchester City Council, Nicky’s guests from the city’s hard-pressed communities were not interested in attacking us. They were eager to discuss the pressing issues highlighted in the report. Gun crime is up 10% in the last year. For all the prosperity of the city centre, 30% of working-age adults are on out-of-work benefits – 50% higher than the national average. Only 29% of pupils in Manchester’s schools achieved five good GCSEs (including maths and English) last year, compared to the English average of 46%.

However David Cameron and IDS did not want to dwell on Labour’s failures when they met with local charities at a community hub in central Manchester. The CSJ presented Breakthrough Britain and its proposals for tackling social breakdown. In his speech, David Cameron set out his vision for ‘co-operative schools’ to play a major role in reversing educational failure.

Referring to Breakthrough Britain’s proposal for ‘pioneer schools’, Cameron said he agreed that if a group of local people - parents or teachers or just local residents - wanted to establish their own school, they should be able entitled to take the money the local authority spends on each child’s education to the new school:

"What better way to give parents direct involvement in their school than to give them ownership of it? To make them not just stakeholders, but shareholders - not of a profit-making company but of a co-operative built around the needs of local children?"

Co-operative schools will feature prominently in proposals the party will publish soon to facilitate ‘a supply-side revolution’ in our schools system. The prospect of parents and communities coming together to establish good schools in hard-pressed areas is very exciting. Complacent LEAs that have presided over decades of under-achievement will have to raise their game or watch their empires crumble as parents place children in new state schools outside their control.

In cities such as Birmingham, Manchester and London, I expect black-majority churches to relish the opportunity to establish co-operative schools for their neighbourhoods. There are large, vibrant black-majority churches in many of the urban areas blighted by educational failure.

In the course of my work over the last seven years, I have been privileged to visit hundreds of charities throughout Britain. However none has inspired me more than Tabernacle School in west London. Its founders, Pastor Derrick Wilson and his wife Paulette, lead Tabernacle Christian Centre, a small evangelical church in North Kensington. It attracts around fifty regular worshippers each Sunday.

Ten years ago, members of the church were dismayed by their children’s lack of progress in inner-city state schools. In response, they opened Tabernacle School in 1998 on a shoe-string budget to educate pupils from 3-18. In its early years the small school had a nomadic existence, operating out of six temporary, shared premises in as many years. The Harrow Club, a charity linked to the public school, shamefully evicted the Tabernacle to make way for a deejaying project. Eventually, in 2005, Tabernacle School secured its own building, a former nursery situated between Holland Park and North Kensington.

Today, Tabernacle School is a happy place where children thrive. Its fifty pupils benefit from small class sizes, traditional teaching methods and a broad curriculum. Children are encouraged to take pride in themselves and their country. In good schools, wearing blazers is normal. Each pupil having a mini Union Jack on their desk is not. Instead of raising their hands and calling out "Miss! Miss!" when they need help, Tabernacle children run their flag up its six-inch pole to attract the teacher’s attention. It’s quirky but effective. Tabernacle is an unashamedly Christian school, and the majority of parents are churchgoers. However the focus is on providing an excellent education rather than proselytising.

Tabernacle started out using an American curriculum with its own exam system because the school considered it more rigorous than the National Curriculum. Tabernacle is now introducing GCSEs and A-Levels, although it will retain the teaching methods that ensure all its pupils attain competence in English and maths sooner than most of their peers in state schools. A good proportion of former pupils have gone to university.

Few Tabernacle pupils have wealthy parents. Maximum fees are £4,500 per pupil. (This is less than the £5,000 cost of funding each state secondary school place parents would be entitled to take co-operative schools.) Many Tabernacle parents who have more than one child in the school and/or limited means benefit from free places or greatly reduced fees. As a result, fee income is much less than the school’s running costs. The shortfall is met by the Wilsons and their church, both of whom have made huge sacrifices to keep the school open.

After his visit two years ago, James Bartholomew reflected on the achievements of this ‘rescue centre for those failed by state schools’:

"Tabernacle School benefits the children themselves, above all. But it also benefits the whole of society. These children could easily have become part of the social problem - going in for crime, unmarried parenting and so on. Instead, they are becoming model citizens - taught to be honest, decent, hard-working and tax-paying. The contrast between what they might have been and what they will be is vast."

It’s a pity that Tabernacle School has not been able to expand and benefit more children. However it’s also a miracle the school has survived at all, sustained only by the faith, hard work and limited resources of Derrick, Paulette and their church. 

David Cameron has visited and endorsed Tabernacle School. That experience may have fuelled his desire to see many good, new state schools set up by parents groups, charities and faith communities. If Derrick and Paulette can transform the life chances of relatively disadvantaged children when all the odds have been stacked against them, think what they – and people of similar commitment – could achieve if government got behind them. I look forward to David Cameron opening North Kensington’s Tabernacle Co-operative School in 2010.

Comments

[Graeme Archer]

Great article Cameron. I am sure there will be comments about the dangers of allowing religious people to run schools. So I will say that to me, a Dawkins-ite atheist, I think that the chance of a good education, delivered according to the wishes of parents, trumps almost any other consideration(*). The reaction of the Labour party in Manchester, and the co-op movement this week, has been stunningly revealing. Rather than dissing the ideas David announced this week, they have spluttered that Tories have no right to express opinions on matters like co-operative schools. From this I infer that they have nothing, intellectually, to offer, other than more state-controlled failure. I feel excited to be part of this revitalised Tory party with its clear mission to improve the lives of the worst off; and thank goodness for the CSJ whose work is the engine of this mission.

(*) of course there should be light-touch regulation to ensure, for example, that post-enlightenment values inform the teaching. I mean science.

[Tony Makara]

Very true Graeme. The fact that the Conservative party has walked onto, and occupied what Labour see as their territory has rocked them. Labour believe that the poor belong to them. Labour believes it has a monopoly on the suffering of the disadvantaged. Now Labour are in a panic. The way to beat Labour is to beat them in their own perceived back yard. The Conservative party must get into the redbrick towns now while Labour is in government, while Labour incompetence is exposed, and show that there is an alternative. Co-operative schools are a great idea, and a real alternative to the failed top-down education that has ruined the prospects of so many children.

[Richard]

There is nothing inherently socialist about co-operatives. If a group of people get together and contract to run an organisation on co-operative principles that is a perfectly capitalist act. Indeed, locally run schools is an inherently conservative act. OK, so the funding for this is coming from the state but it's a step in the right direction.

[Brian W]

What an excellent and very thoughtful idea. It deserves very serious consideration and not a dismissal by the lefties who believe that this is their territory.

I am a School Governor and at one of my two schools where I have this honour to serve, we are going through a visioning excercise for the future. What is emerging as part of our process is that the education of the children comes first and the mechanics are ultimately a peripheral consideration.

This is another route worthy of serious consideration and in a perverse sort of way I hope that the Government have the audacity to steal our ideas since at least we will then have the opportunity to build on the foundations, always assuming that they have the slightest idea of how to implement them.

I firmly believe that politics should be kept out of education since our children get only one real chance in life but I fear that this is but a forlorn hope.

[caveman]

Seems to me that the school runs on good will. Not many heads will work for nothing! Also, the parents provide many of the materials needed to run the school, so the cost per student is probably about the same as in the state sector.

Just a thought - this article says that religion has little to do with day to day teaching. If that's the case why not put all our minds at rest and say that charity schools of this sort cannot be religious at all.

[Victor, NW Kent]

I write as a non-religious person who was exposed to church, Sunday School and a grammar school whose Head was a Doctor of Divinity. Through those means I was exposed to a Christian set of ethics which has guided my actions on countless occasions - not from fear of a god but out of conviction that principles such as these are what glues society together.

Looking at today's youth have no sense of such values so I welcome any group of people who will educate children and imbue them with respect for their fellow men, for society, for authority.

It is clear that state education cannot do that anymore, having lost the will.

I am unclear as to why such simple precepts can be disputed whatever religion or superstition one adheres to or even if one is an atheist. There is no excuse for educating children without inculcating them with the concept of virtues. Surely that is not the exclusive preserve of the Christian church?

[John Moss]

Derrick Wilson is an inspiration. I met him when IDS was leader and was trying to get the media to see the work that was going on, rather than pursuing their crack-habit fixation on "Tory-Split". Fat Chance!

However, there is one thing which we MUST get right with "Co-operative Schools" - or whatever we call them. They must not be beholden to Local Authorities. They must have the right to ALL the funding available per pupil in that area or the LEAs will strangle them at birth.

I actually quite like the idea of LAs providing a percentage of the funding through local taxation, say 25%, but there should be a complete ending of the idea of local, political control of schools. The only way to achieve that is to make sure there are no stings attached to the money.

[John Moss]

Just seen Graeme's comment and I agree. The US actually strikes a good balance here with Charter Schools. Whilst they cannot be religeous, they can be run by faith based organisations.

The subtle difference is that they can teach Religeous Education, but Religeous Instruction is banned.

I suggest the way to achieve this is to take away the daily act of worship and require existing faith schools to only do the religeous stuff "out of hours". I know some will say that faith schools are amongst the best in the country, but there is a Chicken and Egg situation here, brought about by the failure of the comprehensive experiment, ( I do like that phrasing), driving parents to ever greater lengths to achieve the best for their childrenn and those schools retaining more independence.

I see little "faith related" reasons for their superior performance other than this.