Parents in Holgate want to start up their own ‘free school’

Behind the long garden of his town house on Acomb Road, there is a back alley.

“There is shared access,” says the self-employed marketing communications designer, who is married with two primary school-aged children. “It’s a great place for kids to play, and for the grown-ups to meet and talk.”

His neighbour, employment lawyer and fellow father-of-two Nathan Combes, agrees.

He is on his second home in Holgate. When he moved, it was to another house one street away, so much does he like the area. His two children go to St Paul’s CE Primary School just up the road, but there are two other primary schools within easy walking distance: English Martyrs’ and Acomb Primary.

“Holgate is a good area, and a great community,” he says.

The problem will come when his two daughters – who are aged five and three – go to secondary school.

The state schools on this side of York – Millthorpe and York High – are slightly further away. “They are reasonably close geographically,” Nathan says. “But they don’t feel like they belong to Holgate.”

Tim and Nathan are among a group of Holgate parents who are interested in looking at an alternative.

One of the new Government’s flagship policies has been the idea of allowing parents to set up and run schools of their own – schools that are state-funded, and staffed by professional teachers, but independent of local authority control.

Holgate just might be the ideal location for one of these so-called ‘free schools’, they believe.

It is not because they don’t think the local state schools are good enough, Tim insists.

“That’s not the issue.”

It is about choice, he says: choice and the fact that, as a parent, he likes the thought of having more say over the way his children’s school is run – over the ethos, the curriculum, the choice of teachers and head.

“Even if there was a state school right across the road from me, that had fantastic Ofsted results and was very highly thought-of, I would still say this was an option well worth pursuing.”

Jeremy Rebbeck, another local parent, agrees.

“It is about taking part, about having more involvement,” the father-of-two, who is a banker, says. “Like an extension of the Parent Teachers’ Association,” chips in his wife, Julie.

So far, details of just how such ‘free schools’ would be set up and run are still frustratingly sketchy. The Department for Education is expected to make an announcement later this week.

But the principle is not difficult to understand and it seems to have worked in Sweden.

A group of parents get together and set up a new school. It is state-funded – but with the funds coming direct from central government rather than the local authority – and independent of local authority control.

As he understands it, Tim says, the parents would form a board of governors to effectively run the school, including setting the curriculum.

But isn’t there a problem here? How much does the average parent really know about running a school?

Probably very little, Tim admits. But while parents would have overall control of the ethos and direction of the school, that would only extend so far. “You would then bring in professionals to run it for you. The last thing you would want is an amateur school.”

There are many unanswered questions, he admits. Setting up a new school would cost money – and in these difficult times, the Government is unlikely to have much of that washing around.

What’s more, it is still far from clear what would happen if a new school became so popular that, as is the case with popular schools, it quickly became oversubscribed. Tim admits it is unlikely parents would have any say in the school’s selection criteria. “I think if you wanted that level of control, you’d have to home teach.”

So ‘free schools’ are unlikely to solve the never-ending problem of parents not being able to be sure of getting their children a place in the school of their choice.

But, in principle, they would give parents much more say in the way their children were taught.

“It’s about involvement,” says Emma Williams, another Holgate parent and mother of two primary-age children. At primary school it is easy enough for a parent to be involved in what their children are doing. But secondary schools are so much bigger. I want to know what’s happening to my children, and to have some input in it.”

Size might well be an important factor in any new ‘free school’. If there were to be such a school in Holgate, Tim sees it as being comparatively small – with perhaps 150 pupils.

Even so, finding a suitable building in Holgate wouldn’t be easy. There may need to be some creative thinking.

It would need to be in an existing building. “But we would need to look at some innovative ways of finding a location,” Tim says. “In the United States they have them in buildings, or in restaurants, where the school is there during the day and the restaurant opens in the evening.”

He doesn’t have anywhere in mind yet, but if the school was comparatively small, that would help.

In the first year, there would be only 30 pupils, who could be in temporary accommodation as the school found its feet. “Then it would take five years to fill the school up, and you could go a step at the time.”

What really excites him about such a school is the opportunity to be different and innovative. With the help of the school’s professional staff to make sure they didn’t miss out on essentials, parent governors could set their own curriculum, he says.

He would like to see a “school for life” – one which placed more emphasis on encouraging pupils to engage with their community. “I would like to see the children being prepared for the world.”

There would be various ways of doing that – by getting people in from the outside world to talk to children, and sending children out to experience the world. “A great way to expose young people to what is going on outside, for example, might be to have someone go through the local paper with them regularly.”

Until full details of how free schools would work are announced, it is impossible to know whether it would be practicable to set one up in Holgate, or elsewhere in York.

Ten years down the line, Tim believes there could be many such schools around the country. For now, he simply wants to hear from other parents – not only in Holgate – who may be interested in the idea. “This is a campaign that’s open to everyone in York,” he says.

• Find out more at website yorkfreeschool.org.uk

You can also email Tim Moat at tim.moat@yorksfreeschool.org.uk

‘Huge undertaking’ to set up a school

SETTING up a “free school” from scratch would be a hugely difficult and challenging undertaking – and one parents should not enter into lightly, York’s schools boss warned today.

Coun Carol Runciman, executive member for children and young people on City of York Council, said it would be a “huge undertaking” to find the right location for a school, find the children, recruit staff and then run the school.

“The budget runs into millions, then you have all the recruitment and HR issues, it really is an enormous undertaking to do that outside of the local authority,” she said.

Any parents who set up a school would have to realise it would need to be sustainable long after their own children had left, Coun Runciman pointed out.

Any such school would need to be a reasonable size, she says – about 500 pupils. That in itself could cause difficulties for existing schools, by “poaching” students away.

But a school that was smaller – for example, the 150 pupils suggested by Tim Moat – would simply not be sustainable, Coun Runciman claimed.

“I’m not sure they would make it pay that way. In a secondary school, you need to have a lot of specialists, and specialist equipment, especially for subjects such as science and technology.”

State schools in York also enjoyed enormous support from the local authority, in terms of advice, shared expertise and support when things go wrong.

“And we’re also very good at challenging schools to be better.”

Coun Runciman said she understood the desire of parents to get the best for their children. But York’s schools were all good, she said – and some were outstanding.

“I’m not saying parents shouldn’t do it, but I’m saying let’s look at all the options. And I think the first thing any group of parents needs to do is to talk to the local authority. If anybody knows about running schools, the local authority does.”

Existing secondary schools for children from Holgate

THERE are two state secondary schools that typically take children from the Holgate area. Millthorpe School, a specialist language college, was rated ‘satisfactory’ by Ofsted in 2007. A 2009 inspection of its English programme found many features that were good. York High School was rated ‘good’ by Ofsted last year.

Manor School, a little further away, was rated ‘outstanding’ in 2007. It, however, has its own admissions policy and tends to take children from Poppleton, Rufforth and Carr junior schools, not from Holgate. There were 335 applications for 180 places at the school this year.