The New Schools Network is an independent charity set up to help create new, independent state schools. It has a particular focus on areas of high inequality, where large numbers of children are currently not getting the education they deserve.
Schools should drive social mobility. Talent and hard work, not background, should determine success. Yet successive governments – of all parties - have failed to make opportunity equal in our schools. The wealthy can buy a good education - paying for private schools or by buying a house in the right neighbourhood. Others are denied those options.
We have been overwhelmed by the number of parents who are frustrated by the lack of choice in both school and curriculum, and heavy oversubscription for the few good school places available in their area.
The Network believes that allowing new schools - accountable to government, but not run by politicians - will raise achievement across the country. Groups like the National Education Trust are passionate about providing high quality education to underprivileged children, and we are delighted to be working with them to set up schools.
Independent state schools have already been tried and tested in Sweden and the USA and there is an ever-increasing body of evidence that schools run by parents, charities and educational federations improve standards quicker than schools run by politicians, and in doing so force existing schools to do better. In New York, pupils who enter charter schools at the age of 8 will, by the time they are 14, score 30 points more highly on Maths tests than if they had applied for a charter school but not got in. In Sweden, an increase in the number of new ‘free’ schools improves attainment across the entire local authority.
In England the Academy movement has transformed standards in some areas, but we need more. Because the Government controls where and when Academies are set up a pool of potential providers - charities, teachers, international organisations for groups of parents - are shut out from the process. However good their plan and vision, they cannot set up a school.
Of course there must still be accountability - we do not advocate a market ‘free for all’. Schools must have fair admissions and practices and if they do not succeed they should not stay open. The test for new schools should not be how they teach, but whether they improve attainment – particularly for the most deprived.
The Network is working with a range of groups - charities, groups of teachers, organisations and parents - to set up new schools. We will be publishing policy and research on how to make that easier, and we will also be an advocate for independent state schools - both academies and new schools. We believe that National Education Trust will be a fantastic new provider in the future.
