Will the government turn on free schools? | thearticle

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. Here is a cross-section of the

reforms: * Pupils no longer need to sit up straight or make eye contact with teachers. * Less emphasis on uniform — ties scrapped and trainers can be worn instead of shoes. * Devoting more

curriculum time to “wellness” — including community meetings on “identity” and “empowerment”. * Softening of disciplinary processes, while teachers are trained to “manage their own emotions

in conflict situations”. * An effective “decolonisation” of the curriculum — shared national history to be replaced with that of marginalised groups. * Teachers obliged to commit to

so-called “anti-racist” values, as well as anti-bias training and promotion based on racial quotas. * Retiring of the slogan “Work hard, be nice”, which promotes systemic racism and the

“illusion of meritocracy”. 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.