{"id":6566,"date":"2016-02-08T07:45:35","date_gmt":"2016-02-08T07:45:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6566"},"modified":"2016-02-08T07:45:35","modified_gmt":"2016-02-08T07:45:35","slug":"how-free-schools-have-changed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2016\/02\/08\/how-free-schools-have-changed\/","title":{"rendered":"How Free Schools have changed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The number of free schools across England (those set up by local social\u00a0groups,\u00a0but\u00a0free of formal local political supervision) continues to\u00a0grow, and there were around <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/publications\/free-schools-open-schools-and-successful-applications\">300<\/a> back in September. \u00a0This is something I welcome on pragmatic grounds \u2013 they are a way to innovate in what can be a very conservative arena. \u00a0In 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.<\/p>\n<p>When I first came across the idea and practice of a free school (in Leeds in early 1972), it was quite different. \u00a0Then, they were associated with the left \u2013 albeit in a non-mainstream sense. \u00a0Then, 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. \u00a0The steering group of the one I was involved comprised\u00a0an febrile and unstable mix of anarchists, international socialists, a bloke from the\u00a0CPGB who, of course, just wanted to be the Head, and those (like me) interested in the idea (and ideal) of education.<\/p>\n<p>Here's a link to a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/magazine-29518319\">BBC<\/a> piece from 2014 on this sort of experimentation in the 1970s. \u00a0Sadly, there is little detail on what happened in Leeds, and I left the city\u00a0before the school was fully developed. \u00a0There is at least one connection\u00a0between the 1970s and the current vogue for free schools, as the BBC article makes clear. \u00a0This involves\u00a0Michael Young, who founded the Consumers' Association and Which? magazine \u2013 and was keen on educational innovation \u2013 and his journalist son, Toby, who set up a Free School\u00a0in west London in 2011.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The number of free schools across England (those set up by local social\u00a0groups,\u00a0but\u00a0free of formal local political supervision) continues to\u00a0grow, and there were around 300 back in September. \u00a0This is something I welcome on pragmatic grounds \u2013 they are a...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}