Tory Education Plans

Parental choice. It's one those expressions, like opportunity for all, realising potential and zero tolerance of bullying that is trotted out by all politicians when it comes to education. It usually turns out to be a choice limited to the tight confines of what the state provides or allows.

Now the Conservatives are promising what they call a "revolution" where they'd offer government money to parents who wanted to set up their own schools.

They claim their plans are aimed at parents in the inner cities, looking for a way to save their children from failing schools.

David Lomax tested enthusiasm for the idea in the West Country.

DAVID LOMAX:
In soggy woodland on the borders of Somerset and Gloucestershire, it's morning assembly at a new kind of school. The parents of these children are not happy with the pressures and testing of the state system, so they've hired their own teacher and set up their own school. They've called it the School in the Woods, and based it on the principles of parent-led schools in Scandinavia.

TRICIA THORNTON-FEWER:
(Teacher, The School in the Woods)
Especially when the weather is nice we're here every day, and sometimes for the whole day. We do all our lessons here. We do crafts, weaving, we gather natural materials and make things. It's wonderful.

DAVID LOMAX:
There's no state funding here. Parents have to pay between £50 and £75 a week for an approach which is individual and informal.

TRICIA THORNTON-FEWER:
At the beginning of each term, we go over our manifesto. They wrote a manifesto at the beginning of the year. Things like what they wanted their school to look like, the values they wanted to uphold in the school, and the rules. They made the rules themselves, so I don't have to say, "No running," or, "No hitting." I just remind them, "Remember what you put in your manifesto, you didn't want to hit each other."

DAVID LOMAX:
For William, whose mother was one of the founders of the school, the regime here is in obvious contrast with that of his previous state primary school.

WILLIAM BLAKSTAD:
The school I went to before I really didn't like. They were too cross, and sometimes you weren't allowed to play outside. You would get black dots and sometimes you can't play outside.

DAVID LOMAX:
What do you mean, black dots?

WILLIAM BLAKSTAD:
If you get four black dots, you're not allowed to play outside if you've been naughty.

DAVID LOMAX:
Hedevig Blakstad, William's mother, was born and brought up in Norway, and like her son, finds the British state system too regimented and inflexible.

HEDEVIG BLAKSTAD:
(Co-Founder, The School in the Woods)
He was one in a class of 30. It's very difficult. The teachers in the state system are great people. They do everything they can, but they work within a system that I don't think suits the children. It's a system that comes from above. It's a threat over their heads. It's not originating in the children themselves. There is no time and space to look after each individual child.

DAVID LOMAX:
The children do have some lessons indoors, in a temporary hut, but classes are small. There are only four children full-time and two part-time, but what they lack in equipment and facilities is compensated for by more time and attention. Supporters of the School in the Woods argue that where national resources should be spent on education, should be, in the end, a matter of parental choice.

TRICIA THORNTON-FEWER:
We all pay in our taxes for the education of our children. If some people want to put that money into alternative education, because they believe in those values, then why shouldn't the money go there?

DAVID LOMAX:
But how can education for the whole country be improved if the system were fragmented even more?

TRICIA THORNTON-FEWER:
I am very positive about that. I think there's a great need for alternatives. There are a lot of unhappy parents, children and teachers. We go to meetings, and we don't hear very good things about teachers' experiences. They're all pulling their hair out.

DAVID LOMAX:
It's against the background of these perceptions that the Conservatives have been talking about a revolution in our school system. They've made a policy commitment that the sort of choice now enjoyed only by the well-off would be spread to many more families. They've promised to start the funding of the new schools in Britain's most deprived areas.

So far, small schools set up by parents seem to be largely a rural, middle-class phenomena. They've had little impact on the majority of children or on the state system as a whole. But if these breakaway schools were to be funded by the state, the big question is what appeal they would have for the parents of children in schools in inner cities, and urban areas like here in Bristol, for instance.

Falcon Ride Primary School on the edge of the city has about 190 children, and serves an area where there are largely housing association properties or council estates. The head teacher and many of the staff have recently been replaced, and the school is now officially described as "improving". But two years ago it was inspected and put into special measures. Parents were told that it was failing.

ALISON CUTLER:
(Parent)
I think there was panic, really. When the report came out, everybody thought, "Oh, my God, the school's going to close. We'd better hurry up and get our children into another local primary school." I think that's why many people went, for fear of not being able to get their children in another school. We didn't actually know what was going to happen to this school.

DAVID LOMAX:
But you decided to stay, and keep the children here?

ALISON CUTLER:
Yes. My husband and I talked about it and said, "No, we're going to keep the children here, because I'm sure that they're going to really work hard at this school now."

DAVID TOMKINS:
(PARENT)
And they have.

ALISON CUTLER:
Yes, without a doubt.

DAVID LOMAX:
What do you think of the idea, in general, that parents who are dissatisfied with the state system should be able to set up their own schools, and that these should be funded by the state?

DAVID TOMKINS:
It would just be the privileged few, the privileged parents who have the resources and the time to set this up. It would leave poorer, worse-off parents, parents without the ability to do this kind of thing, stuck in a system that they can't get out of.

KELLY ROBINSON:
(Parent)
It's difficult. I think a parent should have the right to, if they feel, be able to teach their children how they want, as long as they're following the same curriculum. But, again, I wouldn't want it to affect any of the state schools if it was to be paid by the state.

ALISON CUTLER:
It's going to take a lot of money to set up. Equipment, I presume, would have to be bought. This is tried and tested, and it works.

DAVID TOMKINS:
Where would it stop? Would you have schools of one pupil and one teacher? Would you have 40,000 schools in Bristol, all with a pupil there, six pupils there, ten pupils there, one here, four there? How would it be controlled?

ALISON CUTLER:
Yes. That's one of my concerns.

DAVID LOMAX:
Parents in Kingswood are obviously willing to support their school's recovery from its recent difficulties. But state-run primaries are under even greater pressure in the poorer inner city areas. St Paul's in Bristol, for example, where there's high unemployment, is part of a new education action zone.

Schools like Cabot Primary have children from different ethnic backgrounds. There's a constantly fluctuating school role. Seven out of ten are eligible for free school meals. Pressures are so intense here that there seems to be a greater willingness among parents to accept ideas for change.

We've talked to a parent governor, a mother who has had two children at the school, and a trainee teacher.

MARCIA ATKINSON:
(Student Teacher)
Our children are not getting what they should be getting. I know my children are not getting what I used to get. I know times have changed, but things should be better, not worse. When you've got children of nine and ten who cannot read, who cannot read as well as a child in reception, then, for crying out loud, there's definitely something wrong.

YVONNE DE SOUZA-RUSSELL:
(Parent Governor)
If the state school needs help, then that's what we should do. Help the school, and see how we get on from there, instead of trying to pluck this from here, to set up something else, which you're not sure is going to work anyway. Why not feed the state school first, and see how we get on?

ANNIE DAVENPORT:
(Parent)
There will always be children for whom the state system is not working. We can't keep pretending that they don't exist, and we must make provision for them. If you split the Government educational funding by the number of children in that country, each child has a right to some funding for their individual education. Whether that be by the parent individually, because that's the only choice that parent may have, whether it be in a state school, or in a smaller school which parents have chosen to create for whatever reason. But the right to do that, I feel, is implicit in us being a democracy.

MARCIA ATKINSON:
I'm definitely for parents being able to take their children out, putting them into a school, and that school be funded by the Government. You have to think about your children. You can't take everyone else's problem on board. I'm definitely for it, once you try with the state and there's no way out.

DAVID LOMAX:
But if parents could do that, and the state funded these other schools, wouldn't that just take money away from the state schools?

MARCIA ATKINSON:
It probably would, but speaking as a parent, I'd have to go for what is best for my child. It might sound selfish, but that's the way I feel.

DAVID LOMAX:
The founders of the School in the Woods, however, are more interested in ideology than in standards. They base their ideas on Scandinavia, where for years parent-led schools have received significant subsidies from the state. There's no complete survey yet of these schools in Britain, but supporters claim that interest is growing and that it's only funding that is holding them back.

HEDEVIG BLAKSTAD:
We have an absolute well-spring of interest in this school. We've got new-born babies on our waiting list. We even have a couple on our list who haven't had children yet, who want to support the school because they want it to be there for the future.

DAVID LOMAX:
How do you see the future of this particular kind of school?

TRICIA THORNTON-FEWER:
I would love to see, if we had the funding, each classroom in a little cabin, or a straw-built hut, all connected, like a village, throughout the woods, and being able to go right through to secondary school, up to GCSE, and perhaps beyond, but at least up to that age.

DAVID LOMAX:
And all funded or supported by the state?

TRICIA THORNTON-FEWER:
That would be wonderful.

DAVID LOMAX:
But there is still an unanswered question, whether this Utopia is to be funded by a redistribution of current resources, or whether the Conservatives intend to find the money from somewhere else.

This transcript was produced from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight. It has been checked against the programme as broadcast, however Newsnight can accept no responsibility for any factual inaccuracies. We will be happy to correct serious errors.