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In a corner of Brent, there are tangible signs of an alternative to the state system or mortgaging the future to pay for an independent school. The foundations are being dug in Roundwood Park, Harlesden, for a home for the first New Model School.
This will be the school's first permanent home. Currently housed in a borrowed church hall with some portable cabins around the corner, Maple Walk, off Ladbroke Grove, is an independent school almost completely lacking in facilities.
There isn't even a prospectus but it's bursting at the seams. The waiting list to get in is so long that the governors contemplated closing it. The school is so popular because it does something the state seems incapable of doing: teaching children to read, write and add up, in disciplined classes of 20 pupils. Even Ofsted inspectors could scarce forbear to cheer. Moreover, it does so for £5,000 a year.
London parents resigned to paying nearly that much per term for a conventional prep school can only rub their eyes in disbelief. Surely there's a catch? Apart from zero facilities, there isn't one. The New Model School, teaching traditional subjects, is the brainchild of Robert Whelan of Civitas, the Right-wing think-tank.
Maple Walk opened with two reception class pupils from two pairs of parents, in September 2004. It now has four classes and 78 pupils. The pioneers, both parents and teachers, knew that the premises were too small to sustain a full primary school but believed something would turn up.
Just in time, it has. An educational charity bought the site at Roundwood Park and is building the school to rent to the new Maple Walk. Much tougher has been getting planning permission. So one cold evening last December, 50 parents turned up for a Brent council planning meeting. "It was effectively stormed by the parents," says Sarah Knollys, the head teacher, .
The vote was unanimous. The builders have six months to construct enough of the school to house 100 pupils. The old premises will start a second school.
Knollys has nine full-time and nine part-time staff. They are paid "slightly less" than the London teaching scales, for the freedom to teach, rather than to take dictation from a local authority.
At the other end of the borough, the £38 million Chelsea Academy is rising from its building site to provide a school for 810 pupils.
The new Maple Walk will cost around £2.25 million for 140 primary schoolchildren and the school will pay five per cent rent to the charity. In other words, about £800 of each child's fees each year goes towards building costs. An equivalent figure for the Academy would be around £2,500.
Were the Government to offer vouchers worth £5,000 a year for pupils at New Model Schools, there would be no need for fees at all. That would offer the prospect of a good education not for the few but for the many, as Labour likes to put it. A new model indeed.
Reader views (1)
Bravo
I came to the site having read the article last night, and I expected reams of comments already. So far there are none. Perhaps everbody is too busy making enquiries to the school, or offering support for more of them to be set up. Let's hope so.
- Terry Arthur, Stamford, England, 03/03/2009 11:04
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