The number of free schools across England (those set up by local social groups, but free of formal local political supervision) continues to grow, and there were around 300 back in September. This is something I welcome on pragmatic grounds – they are a way to innovate in what can be a very conservative arena. In the UK, they now tend to be associated, politically, with the liberal right, which champions them as a way of fighting back against what it sees as monolithic and conformist state control.
When I first came across the idea and practice of a free school (in Leeds in early 1972), it was quite different. Then, they were associated with the left – albeit in a non-mainstream sense. Then, these schools were tacitly supported and sometimes funded by the local education authority [LEA] which saw them as a means of getting those put off by conventional schools back into some form of education. The steering group of the one I was involved comprised an febrile and unstable mix of anarchists, international socialists, a bloke from the CPGB who, of course, just wanted to be the Head, and those (like me) interested in the idea (and ideal) of education.
Here's a link to a BBC piece from 2014 on this sort of experimentation in the 1970s. Sadly, there is little detail on what happened in Leeds, and I left the city before the school was fully developed. There is at least one connection between the 1970s and the current vogue for free schools, as the BBC article makes clear. This involves Michael Young, who founded the Consumers' Association and Which? magazine – and was keen on educational innovation – and his journalist son, Toby, who set up a Free School in west London in 2011.
Respond