Freedom fighter: Toby Young interview

’Architects talk a big game,” says journalist and author Toby Young. “They imagine they have a transformative effect on educational outcomes. But actually, that’s bollocks. There is no evidence to support those claims at all. It’s just smoke and mirrors designed to justify the fees they charge.”

Talk about how to lose friends and alienate people. But Young - who is leading a group of 250 parents hoping to set up a free school in Ealing, west London - has hardly started. “Educational outcomes are dictated by the quality of the staff, not the quality of the building. I can’t see many free schools opening in unused office buildings. They are more likely to be inexpensive new-builds. Crude, basic, meat-and-two-veg new-builds that look like branches of Ikea. Bad news for architects.”

Bad news indeed if Young is right. And he’s prepared to do more than just talk to prove that he is. In August last year he started setting up the West London Free School and this week it was one of 16 to be granted outline approval by the government. He hopes to have it up and running and taking on students by as early as September next year, clearly a hugely ambitious deadline - especially as Young and his team are yet to secure a site. But although he admits it is going to be tight, Young is convinced that by focusing less on a complex design and more on the right staff, it might still be possible. If not, then he’s sure it will happen in 2012.

I want to be free

Young is leading one of an estimated 700 groups - mainly made up of parents and teachers - who have expressed an interest in the coalition government’s free schools, the first of which, like Young’s, are scheduled for completion in 2011.

The schools are based on a model similar to one used in Sweden and would, for the most part, be funded by the taxpayer, non-selective and free to attend - but would not be controlled by local authorities.

The first stage of the application process involves groups setting out their aims and vision for the school and the area they hope to serve. They also need to show that there is demand from parents. They will need to have earmarked possible sites for the school and give details of any organisations they plan to work with.

I can’t see many free schools opening in unused office buildings. They are more likely to be inexpensive new-builds. Crude, basic, meat-and-two-veg new-builds that look like branches of Ikea. Bad news for architects

A new body called the New Schools Network has been established to advise groups on how to set up schools, something education secretary Michael Gove has been busily encouraging under the 2010 Academies Act. The government has pledged to make the process as easy as possible - starting with relaxed planning laws.

But whether this will be enough remains to be seen. Young may criticise the architects who design shiny new school buildings, and he may think a free school above an off-licence could serve just as well. But having spent the past year battling to get his own West London Free School up and running, he certainly wouldn’t claim it’s an easy task.

He did, though, start out with an ambitious vision: “I wanted to set up an academy that would differ from all others in three respects,” he says through a mouthful of tuna carpaccio at one of his favourite Italian eateries by Victoria station.

The food is good - one of the  perks of having lunch with a food critic. Ever the journalist, Young talks fast, eats fast and acts fast - spurred on by a flurry of tight deadlines. “Those three differences would be that it would be sponsored by a group of parents and teachers, it would be in leased premises and that we wanted to subcontract the day-to-day operation of the school to an experienced education provider.”

A pause and a sigh is the eloquent prelude to an admission of compromises reached: “A year later I have abandoned the plan to subcontract the operation of the school to a third party. It will now operate exactly like every other academy in that respect - the board of governors will be responsible for the overall operation of the school. I haven’t quite abandoned the hope of leasing a building as opposed to purchasing one but I almost have - partly because we want to do this so quickly and the coalition have not yet put any of the mechanisms in place to enable a group like mine to lease.

“So the only respect in which I am confident our academy will differ from others is that it will be sponsored by a group of parents and teachers. Just to do that one thing differently is ambitious enough.”

I’m late, I’m late for a very important date

Young was, in his own words, “politically naive” at the start of the process of setting up the West London Free School. “There is a group of parents who have successfully set up a voluntary aided, maintained school in Barnet in north London. They embarked on the process in 2000. The school is opening in September. It has taken them 10 years. I went along with my steering group to talk to them about their experiences.”

And their thoughts on his plans to have his free school up and running by September 2011? “That it’s wildly optimistic,” he admits. “They said if we could do it in five years, that would be incredibly impressive.” But he still thinks there is “a 60% chance” his school can open by 2011. That’s a bullish comment when Young and his 20-strong steering group of teachers and architects are still without a site or a building.

“The site is by far the hardest piece of the puzzle,” says Young. “We found a fantastic one. An unused secondary school in Little Ealing. We discovered that it was owned by the Saudi embassy. We made a formal offer to to lease for between 25 and 50 years. That was in April and our request was sent on to Riyadh for consideration. Since then, nothing.

“It’s another example of trying to do something too differently to how it’s ever been done before. You have to go with the grain, not against it, if you want people to go along with you.”

There have been various plans B and C, of course, though most of these alternative building options have fallen by the wayside, thanks to the sheer amount of red tape in dealing with councils. Young says there are three main problems when it comes to leasing an existing building: planning, regulation and financing. He acknowledges the government is making moves to address the first, but the second two problems are, in many cases, insurmountable: “The government has yet to get its head around the issues associated with financing and I don’t think it will until after the public spending review,” he says. “A lot of my energy in the past year has been spent trying to figure out how to finance a 25-year lease of an existing building and how to finance the refurbishment of that building so it’s suitable for use as a school.

“The conclusion I have come to is that if you can persuade a local authority to give you a building, that’s a fuck of a lot easier. And that in itself is not easy.”

He thinks, though, that as long as he gets some premises, the building itself is not worth worrying much about. Certainly not to the degree that architects and contractors would think. “Architects have perpetuated the myth that academic attainment is crucially dependent on the building that the school is in, and there is just no empirical evidence,” he says. “Academic attainment is almost wholly independent of the type of building a school is in. I have so many examples of successful schools in unusual buildings - I went to one in the US which is the most successful secondary school in the east Los Angeles district. It’s an old department store.

“And the experience in Sweden has been that there is almost no relationship between the quality of the school and the quality of the building. There has been a lot of guff talked by the teaching unions about the appalling prospect of opening schools above off-licences and suchlike.

But a school above an off-licence can be 10 times better than a school that is in a state-of-the-art Frank Gehry-designed building. And that’s the truth.”