Co-operative Schools

1. Co-operative Schools Tom Woodin

2. Starting points • Commitment to co-operation but awareness of dilemmas and difficulties • Pilot project – how are co-operative ideas being played out in schools? • Persistent continuities in education and schooling

3. Co-operative Schools • Not strict co-operatives but application of values and principles to an educational setting • Incipient co-operative • Definition: curriculum, pedagogy, ethos, governance • Co-operative mark

4. Affinities between co-operation and schooling – learning, socialisation, ideas, incremental but profound change • ‘This is what we do already!’ • Starting points • Pic n mix values – trust, honesty, respect, caring

5. Defending existing ways of working • Sharks and predatory chains • ‘Collaborate or die’ • Take ownership of land • Co-operation can be hard to understand historically and conceptually

6. Getting it • Understanding and personal experience of co-operation - • Eg Sir Thomas Boughey: Changes in curriculum, classroom pedagogies, leadership and management, visits and exchanges

7. Partnerships • Building from existing forms of co-operation • Size, efficiency and flexibility • Trust and willingness to contribute • Localising and personalising extended welfare services • Complemented with overlapping networks, nationally and regionally

8. ‘So that when a head says we have a problem, the support team around the family is instant and respectful. Whereas in a traditional world you have a crisis and then phone the EdPsych team or whatever and see if they will come round in ten days time... Here it’s within half an hour.’ • ‘We have virtually no referral into the centre of children from these schools... But that can be a bit scary because what we are saying is “actually we don’t need that bit of your system because we are doing that ourselves.’

9. Membership • Accountability and responsibility of staff, pupils, community, parents. • Can be hard to justify and develop • Beginnings of serious engagement – going beyond consultation into key processes of schools • Forum meetings

10. Pedagogy • Co-operative learning • Vertical groups • Pastoral support • Barometer and parental engagement groups • Co-operative enterprises • CPD: continuous cycles of discussion, planning, study, piloting, training • Re-professionalising through democracy

11. Co-operative difference • Co-operation as a process • Clear articulation of values fosters participation • Moral energy • Grounded utopianism and entrepreneurialism • Do we allow ourselves the opportunity

12. Changes • Range of approaches • Signs that co-operation is being embedded • Long term succession • Intensifying pressures • Inequalities • Confirming and challenging policy