Want to open a small school in my town, but it's v. low income. ideas?

[littlemyyy]

My town has four primary schools, all of which are ridiculously big and have issues with behaviour - not surprising as we live in a very very low income area.

I thought it would be a nice endeavour to open a small school to give parents a bit of an alternative. I've not thought in depth or anything, but the first issue that came to mind is that almost no one would be able to contribute funds. Would such a thing be impossible?

It sounds pretty impossible. Unless you mean you’re going to set up and entirely finance it indefinitely, in which case it would cost millions.

I also live in a very deprived area - behaviour is an issue for some kids but on the whole it’s a pretty tight knit community and the schools get good results. How would you stop the ‘bad’ kids from attending your new school?

I don't think 'bad' kids are the big issue, I think these things could be dealt with if there was a little care and attention. Not in all cases of course but when you've a class of 32 with no teaching assistant it's easy for things to get out of hand.

I can't say my community is very tight knit anymore. Lots of drug taking, alcoholism, absolutely nothing in the area - leads to a lot of wasted potential.

So how would you limit class sizes?

It sounds all very lovely but there's a reason people don't do it. Have you considered volunteering in one of the schools first, both to give you an idea of running a school and an insight into why the behaviour is bad? In our school (small village school but near low income Crap Town) behaviour is pretty much fine but any real issues are down to kids with additional needs not getting support, or in rare cases the parents are so disengaged with school the kids pick up on it and don't give a toss.

@NotAnother it’s pretty common to manage out badly behaved pupils in the private sector.

Just because you live in a poor area doesn’t mean that there won’t be people who can and would privately educate. If anything it seems like a really great opportunity to fill a gap in the market between state schools and very expensive private schools. You could keep costs lower than other private schools by not having lots of extras like fancy facilities or lost of extra curricular things but have small class sizes which would be enough to attract a lot of people who can’t afford to pay for an expensive school.

regina but op says she doesn’t think anyone will be able to contribute financially, so I assumed she’s going to try and get state funding, unless she’s willing to donate millions of pounds.

I don't really understood, do you have any kind of financial plan? Surely starting a school is a massive undertake? Do you have any experience in a project like that?

*understand
*Undertaking

I was part of a group that opened a small Free School - we started with 20 places per year and got funding from the council, developer and obviously via the DfE. It is a HUGE task and took over 3 years to bring the whole thing to fruition. I'm not sure how possible it would be to do this now because so many schools are MATs and setting up on own's own is v tough but it's one of the most rewarding things I've done.

@Panicmode1 - I thought free schools had to have the same intake as regular schools (e.g. 2 classes of ~30 per year)?

@OhLook - As I said in the OP I've not thought the whole thing through, next time I have a question on the matter I shall submit a whole business plan.

@Neighneigh - They don't allow any volunteering, not even on trips! A safeguarding issue apparently?

Yeah but there's not having a plan and seriously thinking about a crazy idea when you've not mentioned any relevant experience?

That sounds really odd not to have volunteers - I've just done my dBs check, references etc so that I can go and read to the tiny ones that need more help. It's not like you can just rock up and say hey I'll take French today...

@Neighneigh - I have to say that the schools in my area are very odd. For example I wanted to have my eldest (20 y/o) daughter on the register of people who can pick up the children from primary school and they said that they don't allow any siblings to pick children up because they're most likely to have 'bad intentions'.

This includes children being allowed to walk home alone - so no two siblings are allowed to walk alone, only one can be chosen from the family... Very weird.

@littlemyyy like a pp, I've also been involved in setting up a free school, but it's not for the faint hearted and is very risky. Being in a low income area may be in your favour if it happens to be one of the areas that the Government wants new free school providers to set up. But it would only be possible if there was a need for more places in the area, not if the existing schools have lot of empty spaces. I'd also recommend getting in touch with existing (preferably fairly local) MATs that already run schools similar to what you're imagining, to see if they would be interested in helping. Bear in mind that small schools have less money (because funding is per pupil) so sometimes struggle to offer enough breadth of provision.

If you Google, there's lots of info on the New Schools Network website, and on the DfE's pages about free schools. Mumsnet may not be the most encouraging place to start your research.

This may help: www.gov.uk/government/publications/free-school-application-guide

@littlemyyy - no, you can design a school to how you'd like it to be - BUT there are a lot of hoops you have to go through to prove that a) there is demand from local parents b) that existing schools are full and c) that you can fund it with the money that is granted We managed for the first 3 years or so, but there were far higher numbers of children with SEN than were expected and so the school have had to expand the class size (by 2) to keep the wheels rolling. It is, as @plantajenate says not for the fainthearted! We had a very strong committee - 3 teachers (one a head teacher), the former head of the Council, an accountant, a surveyor and an architect so we knew which buttons to push and which doors to knock on, but it was a VERY arduous process - not sure I'd do it again! (Although I am very proud every time I see a child walking past in 'our' uniform).

Have you looked at montessori? I am a montessori elementary teacher and bigger classes work well. Training can be expensive but you can make the equipment if you can't afford to buy it.

Some small Independent schools run off the back of a large, profit making day-nursery. That could be one model of making the fees affordable.

OP- you could run it as a very organised home ed group?

but there were far higher numbers of children with SEN than were expected

Yes, we have higher than the local average too. Parents of children with SEND often look for a smaller school because they're less overwhelming, though ironically they don't always have the funding to be able to cater for complex needs as well as bigger schools that can pool the SEND funding for specialist staffing or facilities. When we first opened with one yeargroup in a temp building we didn't even have a suitable breakout space for children who might need to withdraw from mainstream classes for part of the day.

Do you have a background in education ?

I'm not clear whether this is a free school or an independent school.
I will say keep thinking about your idea. It's something I've considered (free school, not fee-paying), but it needs to wait until my children are older and I can give it my whole attention.
There is definitely a need for smaller schools, but getting it right is tricky, and a lot of that is about the staffing not just the pupils.

In the mean time you could apply to become a school governor to give you some insight?

I thought free schools had to have the same intake as regular schools (e.g. 2 classes of ~30 per year)

No they don't. However, they are subject to the same appeals as regular schools so aiming for a class size of, say, 20 is only going to work if you have small classrooms. If you have normal size classrooms an appeal panel is likely to admit additional pupils.

We have class sizes averaging 25. The classrooms are designed accordingly, but there must be some breathing space because we also use setting for core subjects and our higher sets tend to be larger than our lower ones.

We've never had anyone win an admissions appeal over class size though. I don't know if anyone's ever tried it as I'm not directly involved in appeals.

So how do the small faith schools charging less than £1k per term manage to run? Obviously that's still beyond the reach of many, but nowhere near as unaffordable as traditional private schools.