I took a quick stroll over to the Malcolm X Centre this evening for a presentation by the team hoping to create an Urban Village School in St Werburgh. They've recently been featured on the front page of the Bristol Evening Post, and today the headline act was former local secondary head James Wetz, introducing his recent Channel 4 Dispatches programme "The Children Left Behind".

The goal is to create a secondary school of around 350 peoples - a marked contrast to modern trends in the state sector to build schools with over a thousand pupils - using the principles of "Human-Scale Education",

Human Scale Education was set up in 1985 with the aim of promoting small, human scale learning communities within the state maintained and independent sectors of education. Human scale learning environments can foster the positive relationships that enable teachers to know their students well and make possible a more holistic approach to learning that engages the whole person.

A contention of proponents of Human-Scale Education is that UK primary schools offer a better standard of education because their small size allows teachers and pupils to form stronger relationships. James Wetz offered a compelling statistic to support this: of the children who leave secondary school with no qualifications, 40% of them exited primary school with marks that were average or above average. He reported the comments of a Primary Head teacher to a group of Secondary Head teachers: "So what do you do to them?".

For maximum ironic effect, this initiative is being launched just as Bristol Council are proposing plans to "super-size" many of the city's primary schools, allegedly because they "do not give the best value for money for council tax payers".

I hope this works out well for the St Werburgh's team. They've got a lot of obstacles to overcome, particularly since their stated goal is to create a school within the state sector through the "department for children, schools and families" [sic]. Two key problems they will face are the National Curriculum and the Teachers' Unions.

The National Curriculum has few champions outside Whitehall. For some the problem is that it constrains the creativity of teachers; for others the emphasis on tests and targets doesn't leave enough time for learning. Looking at the American examples given in James Wetz's film, many of the schools had negotiated independence from the equivalent US structure - typically a mandated curriculum approved by an elected school board.

The number that did shock me was the Pupil-Teacher Ratio in the UK. Would it surprise you to know it's around 16.1 pupils per teacher (Full Time Equivalent)? In fact, adding in all support staff excluding admit and clerical, on average in UK Secondary schools there are 1 staff members for every 11 pupils. And yet average class sizes are around 21-22 [anyone got the latest stats?]. So what are all the non-teaching teachers doing? A great many of them are in management roles; roles that would be unnecessary if large schools were replaced by numerous small schools. The loss of large numbers of Deputy-Head and SMT roles is unlikely to go down well with the teaching profession.

One thing that did occur to me was whether the project could work if the goal was just "build a school" rather than specifically a state school. I'm preparing an update to an old piece on Redland Green School, for which I've obtained some Quantity Surveyor's estimation sheets. The slightly out-of-date rule of thumb is that it costs around £1500 per square meter to build a new school, and another £1500 to fill it with furniture, carpets, white boards and those little pots of white glue that don't stick anything. If we go with a figure of about 8 square meters per pupil, a "human-scale" school for 350 pupils, would cost around £8,400,000.

A big wodge of cash, but not completely beyond the means of a motivated group of parents and a good fund raising operation. Dealing with the circa £1,500,000 per year in operating costs would be a challenge, but perhaps an opportunity to test-drive an education voucher scheme, and give local parents the chance to make real choices about their children's futures. Because one thing that is often forgotten is that it is to the parents that schools should be offering their services, not to the children and certainly not to the state.

P.S. Elected Ashley Councillor Jon Rogers was there, but no sign of his colleague Shirley Marshall. And now for a musical interlude...

Following on from my previous post, at our recent Association Management meeting, I proposed that the Bristol & South Gloucestershire Conservative Association should we petition the membership on removing Giles Chichester from our party list for the South West Region seat in the European Parliament, and that we collectively write to David Cameron urging him to request Ms Spelman's resignation from the role of Chairman of the Conservative Party

However I was unable to convince the rest of the team that now was the right time to take action; the consensus being that we should give both Mr Chichester and Ms Spelman the opportunity to discuss their financial arrangements with their respective ombudsman - the Quaestor's Office and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. However the Ladies' Committee has written to David Cameron to indicate their displeasure!

If you fancy getting involved in one of our local campaigns, now is a great time to start. We've got a Political Discussion Group taking place on June 19th (venue: 5 Westfield Park), and lots of canvassing to do in Bristol West and the other constituencies.

In other local news:

If you've got £195.00 to spare, you might be interested in a two-day pass to the Bristol Environmental
Technologies & Services Expo. I'm getting quite a lot of traffic to my blog article from people looking for their website. Looks like my Search-Engine Optimisation is better than theirs.

Tommorrow (June 10th), is the full Council of the City of Bristol. I'll be watching it over the Internet to see if I can see Shirley Marshall making one of her infrequent visits to our city. The Conservative Group have got a few pointed questions to ask of the ruling cabinet:

MQ2 COUNCILLOR J GOULANDRIS TO ASK COUNCILLOR P HAMMOND, DEPUTY LEADER AND EXECUTIVE MEMBER FOR COHESION AND RAISING ACHIEVEMENT PUBLICATION OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL REVIEW

• Q1. On reflection, does the Executive Member agree that the public consultation on the Primary School Review should not have been launched just before a one-week school holiday?
• Q3. The Executive Member is quoted as saying that the aim is 'to transform primary education in Bristol and continue (sic) to raise standards of achievements'. Why does he feel so little has been achieved in recent years in terms of improved results and achievements?

COUNCILLOR R EDDY TO ASK COUNCILLOR J PRICE, EXECUTIVE MEMBER FOR HOMES AND STREETSCENE

• Q1. Please can the Executive Member confirm the current status of the urgent inquiry which was ordered after the distressing discovery of an 8-year old body in council accommodation at Mawdeley House, Bedminster, in early February 2008?

MQ18 COUNCILLOR B LEWIS TO ASK COUNCILLOR P HAMMOND, DEPUTY LEADER, AND EXECUTIVE MEMBER FOR COHESION AND RAISING ACHIEVEMENT PRIMARY SCHOOL REVIEW

• Q1 Please can the executive Member provide me with the evidential basis behind his presumption in favour of super size primary schools to give the best possible education?

Primary education is a hot topic in the city at the moment. The contention of the council is that schools "do not give the best value for money for council tax payers". And yet the parents say they prefer these close-knit institutions. The Primary Review Consultation is the justification for this policy, but there will be no school closures before 2010, so there's still time to fix things..

One development that I only found out about recently (via Mr Vowles)is a plan by a group of parents to form their own Urban Village School. Their next meeting is June 17th at at the Malcolm X Centre, Ashley Road, St. Pauls. One to watch, perhaps, particularly with the involvement of ex-Cotham Grammar School head James Wetz.