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We want to start a free school because it’s just a fantastic opportunity to do something
good for our community, and to take all the freedoms we’re being offered,
to get rid of the red tape and do a really good local school.
I’d agree with that. Um, I see it as an opportunity to free the potential within teachers,
and parents, but I think particularly within teachers to take control of education in their
school and to lead, effectively and dynamically, the education in their school without,
as we’d both say, without the need for red tape, bureaucracy, freeing, freeing up the
creativity within teachers.
It’s needed in Hammersmith and Fulham because there are not enough places. It’s really
simple, there’s a shortage of place in the borough and it’s a chance to contribute
to solving that problem, um, with the result that our local authority has been fantastically
supportive, which is just great, and, you know, we are a free school, but they are still
our local government and it’s really great that they are onside.
This interesting thing, from my point of view, is whether, with the support of the local
education authority and with the good support, the professional support and guidance of the DfE,
whether we can get a school up and running in a very short lead time. And that’s what
exciting me. I’m a retired headteacher and I know the lead time for a school is something
like seven years, and we’re trying to do it in seven months. Now it’s tremendously
demanding and it pushes a lot of barriers out of the way; if it’s gonna be successful
it’s got to break the mould about creating a new school. Sustaining a new school is a
different matter and that’s something that we’ll be turning our attention to, but over
the next few months getting that school up and running is a tremendous challenge, very
exciting. We are not seeking to break the mould, er, of education, we are looking to
secure really good education for parents in the Hammersmith and Fulham area. There are
many excellent schools in that area, we are just looking to offer another opportunity
where there is undersubscription in the area, to ensure that the children of the area get
a really good education.
The partnerships, the relationships underlie, they will underlie our success, and the first
partnership is probably between me and ***, to be honest, you know. I’m the project
manager, ***’s the retired headteacher we’ve known each other for years, and so we trust
each other. We’ve been joined on our board of trustees by local parents, who bring both
their personal interest in getting a good school for their children but also they are
experienced professionals in their own fields and so that helps a great deal,
that’s the core.
The next fundamental partnership is the relationship with the Department, actually
– they pay the bills – and there is all sorts of consequences of that relationship,
so getting that relationship right is essential to being successful;
and I think it would be fair to say that
we frustrate the Department and the Department frustrates us, from time to time.
Yep.
We shouldn’t brush over that.
But these frustrations are things which you work, you work through. It’s no good walking
away. There have been some things that James and I have said to the Department we’re
not shifting on this. This is going to be the nature of Rivendale School, take it or
leave it; if you leave it, we’ll walk away, shake hands and that’ll be it. But if we’re
going to be part of this, this deal then this is something that’s unshakeable, it’s
a central part of it and it’s gonna be part of the ethos of the leadership, of the management,
and of the curriculum of the school.
We recognise, and I recognise, most importantly is the fact that we have to recruit a headteacher
who is going to have credibility with the parents of the school, and who is going to
be able to ensure that parents buy into the school, at a time when the buildings are being
developed, when the curriculum is up for development, but that headteacher is going to be the rock
on which everything is built. There’s no good school, in my experience,
there’s no good school that doesn’t have a good headeacher.
Success will be oversubscription, very simply, if more parents want to come than we have
places for that’s proof that we’ve made it work. Um, and, if we just get to that,
we can say we say we’ve done a good thing for our local community.
From a curriculum point of view I would say that success is going to be good standards
in literacy. We’re going to set ourselves the target of achieving above average standards
of literacy in that school. For me, as a professional, literacy is the key to the success of the school.
Literacy, creativity and parental involvement, these are the three things.
They are not unique selling points, they are things that every school holds dear, but if we can
establish good standards of literacy amongst those pupils, then we’ll open the door to
secondary education and higher education to them and to full life opportunities.