Parents Flock To Supplementary Schools

THE GOVERNMENT schools suck. That’s true whether you live in the United States or Britain. And if you are poor, the schools really suck. So what do you do?

In its December 2006 edition of Civitas Review the British civil society think tank Civitas (pdf) describes its effort to help parents with children trapped in dysfunctional schools. It is opening “supplementary schools” A supplementary school is an after-hours school that provides basic 3R instruction. In fact there are over 5,000 supplementary schools in Britain.

These families are forced to rely on the resources available within their communities. And these communities are proving innovative and responsive… Civil society has come into its own. So it is social pressure, arising out of the unmet need for better educational opportunities, that has fuelled the burgeoning sector of supplementary schooling.

Civitas first got into the supplementary school business helping Bengali children in London. But then, according to the Civitas press release, they branched out.

The first two Civitas supplementary schools were thus started for children from ethnic minorities who belong to very strong community groups. However, we would see other youngsters, almost all white, hanging around on the King’s Cross estate, often behaving in an anti-social manner. We were keen to reach out to all these children, regardless of race or religion.

But would their white working-class (British equivalent of white trash) parents be interested?

We were concerned that we might get a poor response from the white working-class parents, but we were amazed by the positive reaction. At the start of the first open evening in October there was a crowd of parents at the community centre gates eager to talk to us. Nearly all expressed great anxieties about their children’s education and were very enthusiastic about the prospect of extra lessons at a low cost.

But now the government is starting to take an interest in supplementary schools. A charity “ContinYou, a charity that receives most of its funding from the government” has issued recommendations for regulation of supplementary schools.

Civitas wonders: Why does the government have to control everything?

This government, like most governments, regards the voluntary and charitable sector as something to be, if not absorbed or incorporated, at least organised. Governments look out over chaos and wish to regularise and bring order. They do not like the random, transient, associative nature of civil society… Government regulation would bring a premature end to a new and exciting development in civil society. We should do all that we can to make sure this does not happen.

That really is the issue.

But why do we need supplementary schools? Give us back our schools, government, and we will make them work.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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