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WSWS : News & Analysis : Europe : Britain

Britain: right-wing think tank opens new school

By Harvey Thompson
22 September 2004

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A new private school opened its doors on September 13 in the Queens Park area of London. The “New Model School” is the brainchild of Civitas, the Institute for the Study of Civil Society, and claims to offer a “no frills” education for less than £3,000 a year.

The independent primary will teach mathematics, phonics-based reading and French, “social skills and good character,” as well as “Judaeo Christian values.” The school will initially admit children aged 4 and 5, but hopes to expand—offering lessons up to the age of 13 years.

Civitas is a right-wing think-tank that promotes pamphlets opposing immigration and asylum. In a letter to supporters, the organisation’s deputy director, Robert Whelan, says Civitas has “gone from being a think-tank to a do-tank” because of the depth of its concerns over the state of Britain.

Whelan urges funding for the school and states that the group has focussed on education because it “is fundamentally a process which transmits from one generation to the next the values and knowledge on which the survival of culture depends. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how greatly many people fear that our culture is in serious decline—one might almost say in meltdown. It is for this reason that we have taken such an unusual step.”

Amongst the publications promoted by Civitas is one by Dr. David Coleman, an adviser to Migration Watch, which specialises in generating hysterical reports about the supposed dangers of immigration and abuse of asylum legislation, wherein he argues that the cultural benefits of migration are “rather difficult to specify beyond a wider range of ethnic restaurants for the middle classes and new kinds of pop music.”

Other titles, endorsed by the organisation include, “Do We Need Mass Immigration?” and “Tomorrow is Another Country: What is wrong with the UK’s asylum policy?”

In the run-up to the school’s opening, David Willetts, the Conservative Party’s head of policy coordination said, “The Civitas school is explicitly dedicated to traditional teaching methods, to strict discipline and a culture of high academic expectations. But that’s just one model—I like it, but then I’m a Conservative. New schools don’t have to follow the traditional pattern—they simply have to satisfy parents. Parents might not want a traditional education for their children.”

For the past 25 years, state schools in Britain have sustained an economic and ideological battering from successive governments, accompanied by a vastly expanded structure of targets and tests, to the point where millions of parents are appalled at the quality of education their children receive.

Seeking to feed off this general dissatisfaction with state education, Civitas is pursuing its right-wing and anti-immigration agenda thinly disguised as an alternative schooling system. As a registered charity, Civitas also benefits from Gift Aid, meaning any donations to the school will be boosted by 28 percent by the Inland Revenue.

Queens Park also falls within the London borough of Brent, one of the most culturally mixed regions in the country. Some suggested that Civitas was playing on middle-class fears of the racial mix in local schools, or the so-called “playground effect.”

All indications are, however, that despite the general level of dismay at the state of education—and particularly as regards the record of the Blair Labour government in light of its much-vaunted commitment to improve education when it entered office—most parents view organisations such as Civitas with extreme suspicion. With less than a week to go before the Queens Park school was due to open, only 10 pupils had been registered. Civitas has been forced to make an appeal to potential shareholders.

Following a local promotional campaign by Civitas, a meeting convened in February to discuss the proposed school attracted only a hundred or so people from the area—not all of whom have been supportive.

The government responded immediately through the person of the former immigration minister, Barbara Roche, who described the Civitas circular as “alarming.” Her remark was disingenuous. Having grossly underfunded state education, given official support to faith-based schools, and fanned anti-immigration sentiments, the government has provided a financial, ideological and political climate in which organisations such as Civitas can pursue their reactionary agenda.

See Also:
Britain: government outlines plans to dismantle state education
[11 August 2004]
England’s schools in funding crisis
[14 June 2003]