The co-operative schools movement in England: who, where and why

ABSTRACT

This paper is concerned with the recent growth of the co-operative schools movement (CSM) in education in England. It provides a detailed description of the demography and distribution of co-operative schools and the motivations for becoming a co-operative school. Based on data provided by the Co-operative College (2014) the paper will identify schools’ geographical distribution, the particular loadings in terms of primary and secondary institutions, the school populations they served, and the correlation between the political complexions of the local areas within which these schools were located and their decision to follow the co-operative route at that point in time. A key component of our research has been to explore the motivations which encouraged schools to affiliate with the Schools Co-operative Society (SCS) rather than with other forms of trusts and academies. We thus complement the statistical analysis of data with interview data from key figures in the CSM and a consideration of the values base within which the CSM is set.

KEYWORDS:

• Co-operative schools
• co-operative schools movement
• social justice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Professor Martin Mills is Director of the Centre for Teachers and Teaching Research, UCL. His research interests focus on issues of social justice and education. He holds an Honorary Professorship at The University of Queensland.

Ian Hextall, since retiring, has been a visiting Research fellow at both Roehampton University and Goldsmiths College, London. He worked in the Post-Grad section of the Educational Studies Department at Goldsmiths College for 25 years after having worked in London secondary schools. He has a long-term commitment to research in the areas of social equality and the progressive potential and political nature of education policy.

Notes

1 Currently there exists a somewhat fuzzy boundary between the SCS and a newly emergent body called CSNET (Co-operative Schools Network). This ambivalence is likely to be resolved in the near future. However, for the purposes of this paper we shall continue to refer to the model which is in place at the point of our final draft (February 2018).

2 The educational researcher and journalist Warwick Mansell has produced powerful evidence of many Academy chains and sponsors failing to undertake appropriate negotiations with unions and professional associations, and/or meeting agreed protocols (Mansell 2017).

3 Martin would like to acknowledge the support of an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (FT110100203) that facilitated this research.

4 Indications are that since that time numbers may have shrunk below 500. We return to this issue in the conclusion to the paper.

5 http://co-operativeschools.coop/about/values-and-principles/.

6 Brighton rock is a stick of confectionary with the word ‘Brighton’ appearing throughout the whole stick.

7 For example, Labour’s 2017 (Labour Party 2017) manifesto committed the Party to working with the co-operative movement to double the size of the co-operative sector.