As readers of this column will know, I’ve spent the last year leading the efforts of a 250-strong group of local parents to start a new state secondary school in west London. One of the toughest things about this crusade is constantly having to bite my tongue. As a journalist, I used to delight in being able to say whatever I pleased and to hell with the consequences. Now I have to be more circumspect. One ill-judged phrase and the whole enterprise could be derailed.
I’m often asked what sort of school we’re trying to set up and the answer I want to give — but am reluctant to because it could harm our cause — is the Eton of the state sector. That plays into the hands of our critics, who often accuse us of trying to secure a private education for our children at the taxpayers’ expense. It doesn’t help that Latin is going to be compulsory at our school for the first three years or that the purpose of the curriculum will be to provide children with a classic liberal education.
But Eton is the model. By that I don’t mean we want our school to be exclusive. There will be no entrance exam and we’ll be bound by the National Admissions Code which means first dibs to applicants who are ‘looked after’, second dibs to children with special educational needs, etc. We’ll probably end up with a few more middle-class students than the neighbouring comprehensives, but only because their parents are more adept at gaming the system and our school will appeal to them. The vast majority of the students will be ‘non-middle-class’ and many of them will be ‘African-Caribbean’. (You can’t use phrases like ‘working class’ or ‘Afro-Caribbean’ any more — they’re politically incorrect.)
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