More Thoughts on 'Free' schools

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Guidelines and regulations are all rather new at the moment, so I don't yet have a definite answer to one question in particular that bothers me, and that's pupil inclusiveness versus selection*. Government rules and guidelines for free schools explicitly forbid them to exclude applicant pupils on certain grounds, physical disability, for example. A Local Authority school will be obliged to accept a wheelchair-using pupil, and in doing so, accept having to pay the cost of any adjustments to the buildings, which may be a relatively large hit to their budget, especially for a small school with old buildings. And of course they do it: not because it's trendy to be politically correct; but because it's the right thing to do: it benefits the wheelchair-using pupil to be in a mainstream school and it benefits the other pupils to live everyday life with less able friends. My question is this: Will a free school have the same obligation, or will it be able to passive-deselect? (“Yes you're welcome to come here, but good luck trying to fit your wheelchair in.”) I find it hard to imagine anyone who would actually answer “no” to this, but I can imagine the situation emerging by default, where a free school doesn't get applications from non-mainstream pupils, simply because everyone knows that they haven't got the facility for….

Who knows what the ultimate goal is? (Conservative Central Office does, obviously, but I mean apart from that.) It starts off looking so innocent as the much vaunted increased customer choice. Then it moves on. Now we have the promise/threat of free schools all over the place. They won't pull Local Authorities out suddenly, like whipping a tablecloth away so fast it leaves all the crockery on the table. It's all being done one tiny step at a time. So far, we've had free schools introduced. Like any new special introductory offer, by and large they are good. Next we had an ever increasing workload put on School Governors and Friends of the School. (Funny, isn't it: how many Tory policy-makers does it take to go from “There is no such thing as Society” to “What we need is The Big Society”?) All the while the budget is whittled away, both by inflation and well-paid accountancy graduates at their desks.

We don't (yet, anyway) have commercially sponsored schooling, but please try to imagine it for a moment. I'm not sure which format I prefer, “Welcome to the Nestlé-McDonald's Wymondham Academy” or “Hi from Happyskool Wymondham, proudly sponsored by…!”. OK, you can scoff now, but when the er– customer choice – available is one or more faith-based schools, a free commercially sponsored school or an expensive fee-based school, don't say you were never warned!

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* Local Lib-Dems have tried asking the County Council, at time of writing they are going to get back to us. Helpful research welcome.

 



The Pencil Speaks

It is the night before polling day. Somewhere, in a bed, in a house, in a street, in a constituency, a voter unsoundly sleeps; the brain stirred by thinking of tomorrow. Suddenly there is a shout of “Thank you Mr Pencil, I get it now”, a dig in the ribs and “What on earth are you dreaming about”?

I was in the polling booth, ready to vote, but all the names on the ballot paper were different from the ones who'd been campaigning: I didn't recognise any of them. I must have said something , like“now what do I do?” when I heard a tiny voice…

Please don't squeeze me with your fingernails!

Sorry! Who are you?

I'm the voting pencil. It's my job to help everyone put their cross on the paper. I've seen it all many times: know the result hours before any of you humans do.

Er– ok. I read all that stuff about how a strong mixed economy is good. But if it's that simple, everyone would agree on it so there'd be no need to vote at all.

Exactly. That's the problem. People don't even agree on what we're voting for. I mean is it

Who do you think is best for the country as a whole? Or

Who, purely in your own selfish interest, do you think is best for you?

I see; I might as well vote for the Selfish-Me-First party because we ask everybody to vote, so nobody has to work it out for the whole country.

You've got it: you catch on fast for a human. But like a lot of things, the first explanation you get is just the general idea. Actually it's a bit more complicated. You've read all the parties' promises, right? So suppose you're very rich, you can afford to send your children to private school, your holidays are spent in your own villa in …

Ok I get the drift…

You'd vote Conservative: never mind that the economy is not best tuned business-wise to a private/public balance. Never mind the local State school. I want lower tax for me to pay, more of my money for my stuff. Of course you'd want most other people to vote the same way too, otherwise the Conservative candidate doesn't get in. Labour's ideas would skew the economy too much the other way.

So, what you're saying is it's not in my interest to vote for a party whose number one priority is convincing me to skew the economy their way. It's ideologies that generate party policies. So it really is best in your own self-interest as well as the country's interest to vote for a strong well-tuned economy.

I can get back to sleep now. Voting is tomorrow.

Look right, look left, then cross. Vote Liberal Democrat.

What can you buy with a cut?

Well, what can you buy with a cut?

Tory election propaganda leaflets proudly tell us that Council tax has been frozen for five years; but at what cost! Cuts in services are starving the mainstream education budget. It is being cunningly done like feeding someone a teaspoonful less every day. For a while you adapt to managing with less, until one day you realise that life as before is no longer possible.

For small primary schools in rural Norfolk, the crisis point is fast approaching. At the present rate, some time in 2016 (when this upcoming election is history and it's too late to do anything about it) some primary schools will either have to “cut teaching hours”, form some sort of alliance with another school in the district, or close altogether. More on that later.

How much use then will be knowing that your Council tax bill is still frozen to 2010 prices, when you find that suddenly your working day morning routine has to include an extra five-mile-each-way car journey instead of a gentle five minute walk because Tory cuts have teleported your child's primary school to the other side of town. (Also there's the return journey of course.) I won't exaggerate by pretending that many families will find that a second car suddenly becomes necessary; but a complicated daily commute doesn't come for free. Anyone know how to buy their way out of it with a cut? … No?… I thought not?

Lib-Dems are committed to protecting the schools budget.