Will the government turn on Free Schools?

Like mountain-sized dominoes toppling one after another, a string of highly successful US charter school networks have succumbed to a progressive wave during the past two months. The

pressure has come following the Black Lives Matter protests, which have attacked the very principles these organisations were founded on. If these decades-old institutions which favour

traditional education can be so quickly snuffed out, what can be said for our own fledgling academy system in the UK?

Over the past half century, progressive values have come to dominate the UK and US education systems. Broadly, these values are child-centred: eschewing teacher authority in favour of

“personalised” learning, with group-based activities and a reimagined curriculum. It’s produced stagnation: a fall in international rankings of education, as functional illiteracy and

innumeracy rates remain fixed while budgets soar. In response, networks of charter schools rose to prominence, catering to the disadvantaged while retaining the power to run their schools

away from the prevailing trends of the state.

Some of the most prominent networks have majority black pupil bodies, such as Uncommon Schools at 88 per cent, the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) at 55 per cent, and Success Academy at 64

per cent. They placed emphasis on high expectations, strength of character, and a rigorous curriculum with emphasis on core subjects. Naturally, their results on standardised tests were

excellent, and their schools rapidly became oversubscribed.

The influence on the UK cannot be understated. Some of the UK’s most prominent academies and free schools drew directly from these networks, such as King Solomon Academy, Mossbourne

Community Academy, and my own Michaela Community School. These schools, too, have enjoyed great success.

Much progress has been made. Less than a decade ago, these UK schools were lambasted for merely expressing their values. Now, the narrative has changed; traditional teaching methods are back

in vogue and Michaela Community School, a poster child for the traditional movement, was ranked fifth in the country with its first ever GCSE results. We celebrated our victory, and would

be forgiven for thinking our achievements, and those of the movement at large, were now a permanent part of the educational landscape.

But within the space of the past two months, Uncommon Schools, KIPP, and Success Academies, have announced U-turns on their founding principles. Each, now fearing the backlash they’ll

receive for having high expectations of black pupils, have announced new policies that bear the trademark progressive label, i.e. sounding incredibly noble at face-value, while in reality

being disastrous for the disadvantaged children they will affect.

Each point has enough problems to merit its own article, but underpinning each is an aversion to asserting authority over children, especially black children, as if this were somehow

recreating the wicked racial authoritarianism of the West’s past. Our pathological fear of nuance, of the image of a white teacher asserting discipline, is a massive backwards step that will

return these once excellent schools to the mediocrity seen at most UK and US schools.

This is a terrible irony. Uncommon Schools have rendered themselves common, the Knowledge is Power Programme now subjugates knowledge to “wellness”, and Success Academies will soon find

themselves unsuccessful. The greatest irony is that, in enacting policies under the guise of “anti-racism”, the drop in educational standards will mean decreased academic performance and

life chances for the black pupils in question. It is a sickening, heart-rending tragedy in which the implementers will enjoy popular support while the children suffer — illiterate and

displaced.

As the summer BLM protests in Britain have shown, we are inescapably downwind of American culture. If established networks of schools can so quickly have their values subverted, how quickly

could our own academies and free schools fall to political and social pressure? This could come in the form of a Labour government, whose current shadow minister for education, Kate Green,

is an opponent of autonomous schooling. It could equally come from the unscrupulous Conservative party, which has failed to speak out against violent protestors and has shown itself

unprincipled throughout the A level scandal. Debates over “decolonising” the curriculum persist already — just how much popular disapproval of autonomous schooling would it take for the

Tories to give in and dismantle the academies and free schools they have until now supported?

If we care for the poorest, the most disadvantaged, this should be our rallying cry: let us not, in the face of one racial injustice, perpetuate a far greater one on our own shores.

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