Free School ambitions

Just over sixty groups of parents and teachers have formally applied to set up their own free schools under the Government’s flagship new scheme.

But do they really know what they are letting themselves in for? And what will life be like for the prospective heads of these new schools?

Megan Crawford and Peter Barnes know better than most.

As a governor in the growing town of Milton Keynes, Dr Crawford has now set up no fewer than three schools from scratch, two of them attended by her own children. She appointed Peter Barnes as head of the most recent school, Oakgrove, when it was no more than a concept, needed to provide increasing numbers of secondary places.

Seven years and some £40m later, the school has just won an outstanding rating in its first Ofsted report, and Crawford was the East of England Governor of the Year in last year’s teaching awards. Between them, Barnes and Crawford make setting up a school look easy – but they’re concerned that inexperienced groups looking to create their own simply don’t realise how hard it will be.

It’s worth adding that most parents with Free School ambitions are unlikely to share Crawford’s experience in education: a former teacher, she is now an educational academic at Oxford Brookes University and chair of the educational leadership research organisation, Belmas.

We got them talking in Barnes’s office, just before the builders moved in to reconfigure, once again, Oakgrove’s buildings.

Steep learning curve 

Setting up a school from scratch was a particularly steep learning curve the first time, says Crawford. “The first school I did was in 1997 or 8, and it was a primary school in our catchment area. The local authority put a letter through our doors asking for parent governors. I was already a governor at a challenging school in special measures, and I thought this would be interesting.

“It soon became apparent that the governing body would not have any input into the plans. At the headship interviews on of the heads withdrew when he discovered even more problems with them. He was quite right, although the school didn’t actually fall down.  It took a lot of hard work by the staff to make the school user friendly.”

By 2003, Crawford had another new primary school under her belt and was asked if she’d chair the governing body of a yet-to-be created secondary school: Oakgrove.

Crawford and her fellow governors found their head by sending emails to contacts in secondary schools asking if they had a deputy ready for a new challenge. They got 12 applicants, including Barnes, who had been deputy of a Northampton school for the previous seven years.

The governors – all without educational experience, bar Crawford -- had already extensively discussed what they wanted from their new school, which had helped them make the right appointment. Now the meetings began in earnest, in a couple of rooms lent by a local primary, to thrash out details of buildings, ethos, curriculum and staffing. “There was no bank account to start with: I had to pay for everything and then claim it back,” recalls Barnes. Two years after the first governors’ meeting, Oakgrove was open for business with year 7 and 8.

“For me, two things are really important in setting up a school: ethos and relationships,” says Crawford. “When the governors got together, before Peter was appointed, I was the only person involved in education, although we had lots of skillsets. So we talked. There were lots of preconceptions around schools and children’s schooling. We boiled this down to our core values, which included relationships. Then we appointed Peter,” she says.

Excellence, innovation and respect 

It was “crucial,” says Barnes, to get the appointments right, with an underpinning of shared values “and how you translate that into operational values on the ground.” The values were truncated into three words: excellence, innovation and respect.

112 appointments later, only 7 or 8 staff have left. “We haven’t had an enormous amount of turnover, which is very important. It’s not about being cosy, it’s about continuity,” says Barnes. Crawford explains that they consciously try to create opportunities to promote staff. “She’s brilliant at finding ways of finding people in different roles,” says Barnes. “I like carrots,” replies Crawford.

Relationships are central but intangible, continues Barnes. It’s clear that their close relationship and understanding has been part of the success of the school – as has the make-up of the rest of the governing body. They have very different skills – often a great deal of expertise in business – and at least one member has a “terrier-like” interest in certain issues which has stood the school in good stead. But, most importantly, they early on came to an agreement of what the school should be about and have held to that.

This is one aspect of the Free Schools plan which troubles Crawford: how a disparate group of parents, likely to be without any specialist knowledge, can work together for the good of all the children in the new school rather than just their own. “You’ve got to see the bigger picture,” she says. “I can understand and empathise with parents who want the best for their children. One of my boys came here. But it’s not an easy road. There is so much potential for things to go wrong if you are setting up your own school - you have to adjust your perceptions and trust is absolutely key.”

The curriculum in small secondaries may be problematic, they think. Barnes says: “We offer more choice in terms of the curriculum because then it works for all our students. Many of them wouldn’t have thrived in a traditional academic route.”

Crawford chips in: “If you are going to have an academic ethos you you are going to have to make sure your intake can manage it.  You need to be able to change things as you go.”

Smaller free schools might have a very limited curriculum, thinks Barnes, and exam fees might be problematic. Crawford suggests such schools would need to hire flexible staff, able to teach more than one subject, whilst Barnes thinks they might end up buying in packages from other companies.

Buildings are another headache. Even with the backing of the local authority and a large upfront budget, the building of Oakgrove has been an ongoing and time-consuming issue for staff and governors. The build itself was delayed when steels became unavailable, which also needed more juggling and creative decision-making by the team of governors and senior staff.

School above a burger bar 

“Architects have a view of things and there is an educational view. Architects hold sway in the early part of most school builds, and heads later – and you can’t ensure how the design goes,” says Barnes. Crawford thinks most free schools are unlikely to have the luxury of a new building.

“But think about if you were setting up a free school in a shop or above a burger bar?” she says. “What if the building doesn’t fit the purpose? If I was setting up a free school a primary, I think, would be do-able above the butchers. But you can’t set up a very effective secondary in that way.

“Our building here was behind, and the local authority was going to put us in temporary buildings. We made them get us a temporary school, which had labs and was much more purpose built. And it’s still here…anyone want to buy it?”

Barnes adds: “If you’ve got a new school it is unlikely to be complete upfront, and changing things round is an operational headache. We started with 300 students and now have 1000, and we’ve always had to move things around.

“We’re doing the same this summer even though the building is finished. Some things don’t work where they are and there are complicated procedures and getting in contractors for six weeks. It’s one of the real challenges if you are going to grow and develop, which seems to be part of the logic behind the Free Schools idea.”

An essential feature of Peter Barnes’s headship, he says, has been his business manager who deals with the contractors and all the other issues leaving him to concentrate on the teaching and learning. “Suppose there are irregularities in the audit – something not right. It really is more complicated than people think,” he muses.

Health and safety, looking after challenging pupils and safeguarding are all complicated even for experienced people running schools. It can be costly if a member of staff takes out a grievance procedure, or there are employment-related problems. Admissions are another minefield: Barnes has one member of staff dedicated to this job alone. And the consequences of getting things wrong are potentially huge.

What advice would Barnes give to a colleague considering applying for the headship of a new free school? “You need to know how things are going to work, how the project is going to be managed. It would be manageable with a two-year lead in time, with someone managing the build but your input there. You would want quite a high level of expertise in your parent body. You’ve got to be able to work together.”

Money needs to be available at the start for buildings and staff. “You have to get the best people,” says Barnes simply. And then: pupils. “The problem is, why should parents send their kids to that school? There’s no guarantee it will be any better. Local schools would have to be pretty poor for parents to take that leap of faith,” says Barnes, whose school is now heavily oversubscribed each year.

“They did take a leap of faith coming here when there were other good secondary schools,” says Crawford.

She adds: “The thing about children’s school is what suits one won’t suit another. Your school might not have a curriculum which suits your child’s needs. And suppose you set up a free school and your child doesn’t want to go there, because they want to go where all their friends are going?”

But for a head, there can be huge advantages of being in from the start, says Barnes, who is clearly a happy man. “You set your own values and ethos. It gives you a huge advantage being able to appoint people. It’s luxurious: I haven’t inherited any staff.

“It’s also been a huge project. The school has been developing and expanding, never sitting still. And I really like working with Megan.”

“We’ve got all this expertise now,” says Crawford. “Perhaps we could set up company to advise on how to do this kind of thing?”

Susan Young is an Education Journalist.