Free our schools

By Toby Young 1240PM GMT 09 March 2010

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Class action Toby Young and his wife, Caroline, wish their young kids to go to propagandize with pupils from all walks of hold up Photo CLARA MOLDEN

Lying awake, I mostly dream about the day my new propagandize opens. In this dream, I"m hire off to one side examination the pupils tide past in their new uniforms, faces full of hope. No fanfare, no plaudits. Just the still compensation of meaningful I"ve finished a difference. I afterwards get on my bicycle and float off in to the sunset, Gary-Cooper-style.

OK, it"s a bit pathetic. But I need something to keep me going. I"m right away heading the efforts of a organisation of relatives and teachers in Acton, west London, to set up Britain"s initial "free school" and it"s a overwhelming task. We have to find a site, digest a curriculum, partisan the staff and convince the Government to compensate for the total pack and caboodle.

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I not prolonged ago met up with Jonathan Fingerhut, the personality of a primogenitor organisation that has succeeded in environment up a voluntary-aided propagandize in Barnet, anticipating for a small encouragement, but he was curt to a fault. "To be honest, if I"d well known at the commencement of this routine what I know now, I would never have taken it on," he said. It took Jonathan"s organisation 9 years to set up the Jewish Community Secondary School and his young kids are right away as well old to attend. I goal it doesn"t take us that long.

Our plan is to begin an academy, that can be finished quicker than starting a internal authority-maintained comprehensive, but no primogenitor organisation has attempted to unite an academy before. The set-up procession is written to be intent in by alternative official bodies, not a garland of well-intentioned amateurs. I mostly feel identical to an wanderer bobbing up and down in the void, perplexing to find an entrance point in to a space hire that"s usually been written to wharf with alternative spaceships.

So because am I bothering? The elementary answer is I have 4 young kids to educate. Admittedly, if I was devoting as majority appetite to my career as I am to this propagandize project, I could probably consequence sufficient to send them all to Eton, but I don"t wish to teach them privately.

As the product of 3 state schools, I benefited severely from being prepared to one side people from all walks of hold up and I"d identical to my own young kids to have the same experience. My be concerned is that if I send them to an eccentric school, they"ll be surrounded by people only identical to them.

At present, there"s usually one extensive in Acton that I could send my young kids to and the educational lane jot down isn"t great. Last year, for instance, usually 37 per cent of the students got five great GCSEs together with English and maths. Fiona Millar, Alastair Campbell"s partner, is all the time popping up in the media propelling my organisation to put the energies in to mending the internal comp, but I"m not certain how acquire we"d be. It believes in "personalised guidance programmes" and the specialism is "Media Arts", since we wish a propagandize that offers a classical magnanimous education, with mandatory Latin for the initial 3 years.

In any event, by the time my young kids are of delegate propagandize age, I disbelief we"ll live close sufficient to get in. There used to be a great extensive only down the road, but Ealing Council sole it off in 1985 when the race began to fall. Now that it"s rising again, there won"t be sufficient places at the internal propagandize to go around.

The issue isn"t either Acton needs a new comprehensive, but who should run it. Do we wish an additional internal authority-maintained school, charity majority the same curriculum as the alternative thirteen in the borough, or one with a narrower concentration that puts the importance on educational attainment? The nearest estimation to the kind of propagandize we wish is Twyford, the internal Church of England extensive with a GCSE pass rate of 74 per cent. Last year, 684 young kids practical for 120 places at Twyford, so there"s small disbelief that the West London Free School will infer renouned with internal parents.

Of course, not everybody is onside. One Acton proprietor left a criticism on the website last week accusing us of being "desperate" to safeguard the brood didn"t go to the internal extensive "where they competence have to association with usual children".

I"ve attempted to answer this assign a thousand times, indicating out that we intend to do all we can to safeguard the propagandize has a honestly churned intake. We wish the West London Free School to be a "comprehensive grammar", charity young kids in the internal penetrate estates a approach out of the misery trap, only as abbreviation schools of old did. But it"s no good.

Some people have simply finished up their minds that we"re only a garland of middle-class snobs who think the internal comp isn"t great sufficient for the kids. (It doesn"t assistance that my young kids are called Sasha, Ludo, Freddie and Charlie.)

Our plan is to open the propagandize subsequent year, and either we attain depends on the result of the election. We"re perplexing to swell underneath the existent rules, but it"s a torturously delayed process, as Jonathan Fingerhut discovered. Michael Gove, the Shadow Schools Secretary, has betrothed to brush majority of the hurdles away, creation it probable to set up academies in 9 months. Unless Ed Balls gives a identical undertaking, I know who I"m choosing by casting votes for.

Whatever happens, I goal we can do it in fewer than 9 years. My daughter will spin 7 in Jul and the time is ticking.

You can find out some-more about the West London Free School by on vacation westlondonfreeschool.co.uk