There are moments in life when you’re lucky enough to stumble across something amazing. I give you the New School in Croydon.  It’s amazing because it’s trying to do education in a different way for different ends. It’s a story of determination and innovation. Against the odds and despite the mainstream education system, it’s doing a priceless service. Not just achieving the highest grades or the best Ofsted evaluation, instead it teaches everyone who comes near it the art of how we can live together successfully in the 21st century. And along the way it shows us a very different way of running our public services.

Right now, the New School is a flickering beacon of hope. A flame that might be extinguished by state bureaucracy and its seeming indifference to innovation and enterprise in our education system, we must hope that isn’t the case.  

This all-through school, now going up to year 10, opened its doors as a primary in South London in September 2020. It’s a charity, but it’s free to attend and uses a comprehensive entry system. A high proportion of the children are from disadvantaged backgrounds, 34% of pupils are eligible for free school meals, one-fifth have special educational needs and 75% were previously home-schooled.

The founder, Lucy Stephens, opted for charitable status but with a very public ethos because she wanted the freedom to have a purpose and a culture that simply couldn’t be contained in the rigid state system. 

The purpose of the school is all centred around pupil well-being and its method is democratic. 

To produce kids with the highest possible levels of well-being the school uses four measures, self-esteem, self-efficacy, educational engagement, and life satisfaction.  These are the metrics on which they want to be held to account as well as the dreaded Ofsted. 

In terms of method, they are a democratic school or more precisely a sociocratic school, adopting an increasingly popular system of ‘decision circles’ covering the key areas of school management.  It’s a values-based system of governance that uses consent, not authority, to make decisions.  In these circles Lucy or any teacher can sit with the canteen chef, other support staff and pupils and all views and voices are heard and equally valued. The process can take longer than a normal school hierarchy that simply commands from the top, but the decisions are more effective because they are consensual. The diversity of voices and views enriches the decisions made and creates advocates because the people who are affected, the pupils and staff, are involved and engaged.  

If it sounds a bit ‘hippy-dippy’ then welcome to the real world where your certificates soon become meaningless and you must get on with others, listen to them, compromise, change and adapt.  Here’s an example.  A teacher suggests to the class that they spend at least part of the week practising their handwriting.  Some children queried this, why in a digital world should they worry about such old-fashioned skills? The grumbles echo around the class.  Eventually the teacher stops the lesson, they form a circle to discuss the pros and cons of allocating time for handwriting.  Everyone who has a view expresses it. They come to a compromise in terms of what time and for how long they will practise their writing.  Maybe the teacher didn’t get exactly what they wanted, and neither did all the pupils – but they arrive at something they can all work with. 

Far more important is that they learn how to listen, speak and engage with others, honing not just the skills to write legibly but think and communicate creatively and constructively together.

At one level it seems to be working in the sense the school is massively oversubscribed with a very broad catchment area.  But financially the school struggles.  It doesn’t fit the Education Department’s formulaic criteria for school funding, and it isn’t part of one of the big multi academy trusts. Instead, it relies on sponsorship from trusts and philanthropy.  

If ever there was a case for the local and national state to step in and support an exciting and compelling example of education innovation, then the New School is it. 

This is a real time petri dish experiment about how to transform the education process. It was impossible to create it from inside the system, only from outside. This flame now needs to be nurtured and fanned by the state.

The New School starts, like every great project, with a belief in the best of us and the notion that all of us have the capacity and capability to build our own lives and contribute to society in our own unique ways. As our world gets ever scarier in terms of threats from national populists and the uncertainty of climate and economy chaos – children need to be guided and supported to become as resilient and adaptable as possible.  No one is going to survive and thrive in the decades to come through their own lone competitive endeavours. Passing exams will always matter but feeling good about yourself and your fellow pupils, learning how to be a fully-fledged citizen will matter more. 

But the New School is about more than just education, alongside hundreds of other examples like Lives Through Friends in social care and the Citizens Network, people are finding new ways to do relational, networked and participatory public service delivery. Yes, the market and bureaucratic machine will always pay a role in delivery but the predominant way we decide and do things in the 21st century should be more like the New School than the target driven New Public Management theory. Come on Bridgit Phillipson and Wes Streeting, learn from what is really working on the ground and help it fly. 

The future we want and need it’s not going to be imposed on us but negotiated by all of us. Lucy, her colleagues and pupils are showing us how.

This article first appeared in the Byline Times on Tuesday the 11th of February 2025.