Financing Transformations in Education - An Inquiry

Welcome to the Future Learning Design Podcast.

You know, there's a, a certain symbiotic relationship that communities and schools have with one another, and I think that with critical investments and targeted investments, we can make some really, really smart transformations that have this ripple effect.

Hi, and welcome back to another episode of the Future Learning Design Podcast with me, Tim Logan. The podcast is brought to you with the support of Notosh. This week's episode is a special selection of conversations with some amazing educators and entrepreneurs who are creating vital opportunities to tackle social, spatial, and environmental injustice, build individual and community wellbeing and livelihoods. And develop personal agency. All three of them are achieving this in part by radically rethinking approaches to the way that education has historically been funded and seeking out alternative, innovative approaches that create leverage points for educational systems change with very exciting potential. With my friend and colleague Brad Carter, we speak with Dr. Akira Drake Rodriguez, Ana Iguiri, co-founder and worker-owner at Tazabayas Cooperative, Mondragon, and Lucy Stevens, founder, co-headteacher, and charity director of The New School in Southeast London. Dr. Akira Drake-Rodriguez writes about race, cities, and space in the United States. She is currently assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Weitzman School of Design. Akira's book, Diverging Space for Deviance: The Politics of Atlanta's Public Housing, was published in 2021, and it examines the dialectic between Black feminist politics and public housing policy in Atlanta. From 1936 to 2010. And Ikira was the lead author on Transforming Public Education: A Green New Deal for K-12 Public Schools, an initiative of the Climate and Community Project sponsored by the McCarg Center and Sociospatial Climate Collaborative. Brad starts by laying out the big questions that he and I have been asking with this inquiry.

There's no question that for the most part, the quality of education you get in well-funded schools is better than what you get in a poorly funded school. That's just all there is to it. The standard of teaching is generally better. They have access to more resources and they have access to more connections too. So, you know, what we're trying to solve for is how do you provide that kind of thing to anybody, right? You know, regardless of where it is, right? And that's a real puzzle because for whatever reason, some people think, well, if I'm going to pay money for education, then we're going to, you know, it's going to be special over here. And it's kind of hard to move that out and scale it. But I think there's got to be a way. And so we're kicking around what's a different way to fund it or, you know, and not look at the traditional kind of thing of, well, let's get some big backers to, you know, write some checks, set up an endowment or whatever, because it still winds up being the same thing.

Yeah.

And that's to me pretty universal, I think.

Yeah.

So one of, I mean, one of the things we were exploring for this, for me, is very specific practical relevance, cuz I'm thinking about what could we do here, but also we just raise a bit more awareness about what might be possible if we then start sharing this out into the world of people listening to the podcast and thinking, oh, okay, that's an interesting way to frame it. And to get away from this scarcity principle about, you know, the only way out is to just to find that extra bit of money to pay for that private education. It's like, come on, there's gotta be a better way than that.

Right?

I really liked that idea that you had brought together disparate stakeholders into a kind of, with a common purpose. And particularly also the fact that it was about climate, which is also, you know, rings some bells for me, but even if it wasn't, it's like, what's the common purpose and how could we collaborate and bring people together? So I don't know, could you perhaps talk a little bit about how that process went, what some of the challenges were, you know, those kinds of things?

Sure. Most of my experience came out of my work in Philadelphia, where there's a pretty active community and pre-existing organization known as the Philly Healthy Schools Initiative. In Philadelphia, we have about 215 school facilities, and the average age of those school buildings is about 80 years old. Philadelphia is also the largest poorest city in the US. We have a poverty rate of about 26% of a population of 1.5 million. And so our school system is overwhelmingly majority minority and eligible for free and reduced lunch, so below like the federal poverty level. As a result, we have students in old buildings, often in overcrowded conditions. So even though our high schools, for example, built for 2,000 students and currently hold 150 of them, those classrooms that they're in are actually still overcrowded because there still aren't enough viable classrooms or teachers or resources to cover those students' needs. In addition, the parents feel disenfranchised and don't feel like they have a lot of say in what the community does. So the, the most sort of recent issue that really sort of produced a lot of parent involvement was both the state takeover of our school board in the early 2000s, as well as the subsequent recommendation to close up to 57 schools in Philadelphia. They ended up closing about 30 of them in predominantly Black and Latinx communities. When you close a public school, you basically close a neighborhood, right? People, people leave, right? Or the local public school is turned over to a charter, which does not always have to take that student. So the charter may take the student in the beginning of the year, but kick them out by January for behavioral issues. And then that student has nowhere in their neighborhood to go to school. And so it is definitely, you know, you can see see it as an educational justice issue. If you have no neighborhood school, you can see it as like a spatial justice issue. And now because of the conditions of the schools, I mean, our schools are essentially like totally constructed of asbestos. There is, uh, I think they said 11 million square feet of asbestos in all 200 buildings. And so it is everywhere. Our pipes are full of lead for our water. The paint is often lead paint, and there's tons of, you know, mold and vermin in these school buildings. And so they are, as the, the local paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, called them toxic schools. And so there's an environmental justice and educational justice and a spatial justice issue. And we really think that bringing together all of these disparate issues of wanting to have healthier, cleaner schools with more community involvement and more buy-in and participation and control is something that a lot of people can get behind. And so in Philadelphia, Philadelphia in particular, but in other cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles and New York, you're seeing really energized teachers unions, really energized student unions, and really energized parents that want to create these sort of schools that act as community infrastructure.

Amazing. Yeah, that's really interesting. And have you seen some— if we go to the next stage, like some good examples of where that goes, like what emerges out of that? Because I can totally understand that people will want to get behind that. But then, yeah, where does that go?

Yeah.

And so it goes in a couple of different directions and, and there are lots of different layers to who funds schools and how these sort of plans can translate to concrete actions. So with the example that I gave with the Philly Healthy Schools Initiative, that is a stakeholder coalition of parents, community members, students, public health officials, local elected officials who are working together to prioritize the cleaning up of schools by these sort of neighborhood and school conditions. So it's not just the schools that are in the worst conditions, but schools that are in poor condition that are also in low-resource communities that could really use this infusion of resources. So this idea of equity is baked into it, but the money is not there, um, especially after a year like this. So tax revenues are down. Every year the school district has a huge deficit that just grows larger and larger. There are $4.5 billion of capital repairs that the school district needs in Philadelphia, and that's just to get it to like 1960s standards. That's not even, you know, Wi-Fi for everyone. And so there is a huge, huge hill to climb, and this federal funding that we're seeing from Biden administration is definitely a critical component to trying to like right-size how schools are going to look in the future. We need a massive infusion of funds to sort of make up for the last 100 years of disinvestment in these cities, for sure.

So, yeah, so interesting. It gets really big really quickly, doesn't it? Because you can see why then the private money just comes in. They have access to funds, they can inject like charter or whatever, or immediately how, how that just, they kind of swoop in and just solve it somehow, but really not solve it, right?

Yeah.

Interesting. And the other thing I thought was really interesting was like that idea, like we could try to get it to 1960 standards or 1980 standards or whatever, or we could think like, what would a kind of regenerative community look like? Or what would a properly kind of climate resilient or climate kind of contributing school look like? And then jump to there, whether it's possible or not, I don't know, but not just kind of refurbishing a school, if you know what I mean.

Exactly. Exactly. It's not just about like rehabbing it. We do wanna regenerate it. And I think that's a really a good verb to use because it is about transformation. We're trying to transform education and we're trying to transform school facilities. And I think that is really, you know, a useful way of thinking about it is that we're not building a school that is a school for the student of the 1940s and '50s. We want to build a school that is for the community of now, right? And so addresses those needs, you know, We just have so many disparate needs that both spill out of the school and come into the school. So I always tell the story of, you know, a student can get triggered by an asthma attack because of the conditions of the mold, you know, found in a school facility and take that public health risk out into a community, you know, have an asthma attack perhaps, and then incur all of these costs, all these community costs, simply because of that school facility. At the same time, that student can receive Services, could receive a Chromebook, could receive access to fresh food, and also take that out into her community. So I think that there are, you know, there's a certain symbiotic relationship that communities and schools have with one another. And I think that with critical investments and targeted investments, we can make some really, really smart transformations that have this ripple effect. We've seen the negative ripple that schools can produce when we do this. So thinking about those positive ripples is really important.

Just if I could ask a question around that, what's the play between, you know, kind of getting the money or the funding for this and building a school around these contemporary problems, not 1940s problems? So how is that working? Like, are you finding that as you try to solve this problem for the kid who has asthma, you know, problems in, problems out kind of thing, is that helping you appeal to various different kinds of funding? Are you saying, look, we're not going to worry too much about whatever the state curriculum is? Like, I mean, that's there, but the school is clearly performing some other functions as well which are critical to the community, and those maybe take priority over, you know, getting a B+ average or something like that, right? Are people open to that idea that, yeah, schooling, you can get some grades and things like that which are maybe necessary for your future employment and stuff, but there's a lot of other stuff that happens there?

Yeah, it's a, it's half and half. So certainly there are, you know, schools and the education system, it's a large bureaucracy. So there are people there that are very much invested in the idea of the project of the school, right? And so high performance standards, good grades. And I agree, I am not very focused on educational attainment and outcomes in that traditional sense. And that is a luxury I have. For, you know, people who are invested in education policy and study it very, very deeply, you know, the literacy rates and the graduation rates in Philadelphia are not where they need to be. And that is something that most people would want to focus on over, you know, a 10-year capital improvement project of like revitalizing all of these schools. Right. And so it's, you know, we're building these schools for the next generation essentially. And that's something that, in the here and now is really tough for people to, to deal with. So that is, I definitely again see this opportunity of federal funds as a both and, right? Like, I definitely think that yes, we can make direct improvements in the curriculum and, you know, provide, and that's part of the stimulus, is providing more teachers in the classroom, creating more resources that are available for that educational achievement. But those teachers won't stay if the buildings aren't healthy. Those teachers won't stay if parents and engaged. So you have to bring all of these things at the same time. You really can't afford to prioritize one over the other simply because they need to all come together in order to work effectively. You can't just throw teachers into crappy schools.

Yeah, absolutely. It's trying to practically think, how do we move from here to there without compromising the needs of the here, you know?

Yeah.

And the reality of the last year is that there's just been like a total loss of social trust and cohesion, obviously in the broader community, but definitely within schools. We've seen really a strong ritual against teachers unions and the hesitancy to reopening school facilities has been really, really hard within the school districts, right, and building trust and creating this idea of collaboration. So you talked a little bit about this in the beginning about this idea of like scarcity, and that is how school districts are used to operating. Like everyone's fighting everyone for these like $2 or $3 billion, which doesn't go very far in this district. And so the idea that, you know, we have an opportunity to have additional resources and actually collaborate on how to use them effectively, it's kind of hard right now because this is actually like one of the diverse times to want to do collaboration in the context of the school. So that I think, you know, practically for me has been very difficult. I would say over the last 2 months is really just trying to bring these stakeholders together again, because it's been such a tense year.

Yeah. I was really interested by your socio-spatial justice stuff. That's, that's obviously not specifically education related. Is there anything similar in that space that would be, you know, just any learnings from, because it was more housing related, I understood, in your book that's coming out.

Yeah. And certainly I think the, the idea of spatial justice and social justice is very much baked into this project and thinking that one, we want people to have— when I think of spatial justice, I think of not just the ability to move through space freely and equitably, but also the idea of having some control both over that movement and that space. And so I do think that, you know, I'm very concerned with the governance of schools and the involvement of parents and students and local and I, I do see it as a social spatial justice project in that we're trying to create greater local control, but produce equitable outcomes and processes through the infusion of these additional funds. So kind of breaking that relationship between property tax value and school budgets that we know is based in racism and, and, and its own spatial injustice because of the, the flood of resources to suburbs versus the inner city core. And so So just thinking about, you know, breaking down those injustices and folding that into the policy where we're acknowledging that that was an injustice and that this is a way of sort of repairing that harm in the past. You know, we're not going to— it's hard to like bundle everything into one policy and one research brief, of course, but certainly those are sort of like the guiding principles that we're thinking about, that we want it to be about, you know, jobs in communities that lost them. We want them to be green, sustainable jobs. We want healthy buildings. And we want people to both be aware and super engaged about the idea of these schools as this resilient local infrastructure. So, so that is kind of like the overall push, but honestly, we're just like happy to get safe schools.

Yeah.

Yeah. Right.

Happy to get any piece of it.

No, absolutely. It was just making me think there are some other projects, one particular in Romania, Romania, like there's a couple of other things that are just in the kind of education transformation space of, of where where they're exploring that idea of, let's say, learning and living being kind of part of that same thing. And I, 'cause we see school as this very separate big kind of building we need to regenerate or whatever, but actually one of the things we're questioning is what, what is school and could a learning environment or learning hub or, you know, whatever language you want to use around it be somehow some much more enmeshed into a community, right? So there's much more community ownership of it. There's much more community involvement and kind of, well, the, the kind of really important narratives of that community kind of woven into that thing. You know, again, it's kind of theoretical to some extent, but it's—

no, I like this idea of like a decentralized community school. Um, so we have like community schools and it's, it's all about local partnerships and working, you know, bringing together key components and community assets into school facilities. But I think you can do it the other way, right? You can push some of these school benefits and educational programs into other aspects of the community. We see this with public libraries, we see this rec centers. We saw this over the last year. We literally had learning hubs because we needed a place for kids to do virtual school in a safe environment. And so we were recreating those educational spaces in really unconventional ways that like worked for local conditions, addressed, you know, local context, or sensitive to cultural, you know, so it was, it's just like a really, again, I think that flexibility of the space of education, whether it's virtual, in person, together, separate, I think is really important too.

Yeah, I just wonder if I can just back up a bit to this idea, just a moment to, you know, this is about education or spatial or social or environmental justice, but it sounds, you know, the way you're organizing this around the idea of justice first. Is it fair to say that you're organizing around justice first and, you know, education sort of formally comes second? But that's an interesting organizing principle for a school, you know, sadly maybe a disruptive or subversive idea because I mean ultimately that's what education is about, I think, in some sense, about, you know, creating justice or creating in people this capacity for just action and all the rest because, you know, I learned I learn all these things in there besides whatever skills I may need for a job. You know, that's only half of it really. And even my job in some sense is about, you know, justice and equity in the world or something like that. And you were saying a bit earlier that that seems to be— that seems to be drawing the attention of people, right? People can get behind this project because you've given them these different pathways. I could be somebody who's experienced well, racial injustice or education injustice. So that sounds like it's a really good attractor for that kind of community energy. I've not heard anybody organize a school around that. They, you know, they organize around, let me think of some things, like STEM kinds of things, you know, we're a STEM school and we're creating, you know, kids who are employable in the future. In fact, I was in a conversation yesterday, day before, with a group of people who are looking for some climate action in British Columbia. India, and they were trying to look at how they got going. And I suggest we, you know, we look at, you know, don't start with the practical things that need to be done. Start with how people feel, because that's what's going to motivate them to do something. And if I felt injustice, well, that's a pretty strong motivator, right? And so is the desire to do justice or be, you know, be just, I think.

Yeah, it's like an ongoing project too, which I liked. You know, it's not just like a we're producing widgets type of thing. It's like an ongoing push for more justice for more people. And I think that's there are always new injustices being created. And so I think that's like a good thing to kind of like keep a focus on.

Ana Igueri is the co-founder and worker-owner at Tazabayas Cooperative, where she leads the cooperative development area. She is the vice president for the International Cooperative Alliance Youth Network in Europe, where she also serves serves in the Youth Executive Committee. Among many other projects, she currently co-leads the course on Platform Cooperatives Now with The New School in New York and Mondragon. Ana studied at Mondragon Team Academy in the first class of the Leadership, Entrepreneurship and Innovation degree. Ana begins by giving us an overview of her background with Tazabayas and worker-owned cooperatives.

So I'm a co-founder of a co-op, worker-owned co-op, right? Da sé valls. Da sé valls, the meaning itself means, and why not?

That's it.

And so we created the co-op because we were part of a very interesting education called Team Academy. So it's an education that comes from Finland originally, but landed in Spain 2008, and we were the first class. And the education is on business, but the way you learn is you create a company that it's real on the first year alongside maybe 10 or 14 of your colleagues and you're divided in teams and you don't choose, the coaches choose for you because they know they've done, you've done a process of like interview and a couple of things. And you're stuck on that team for the next 4 years. That is what the graduation lasts. And you are meant to make that business run for 4 years. So you have 150 indicators per year that some of which include money and then you need to run it. And, and every year you travel to one country to see see the entrepreneurship ecosystem in other places and learn about other cultures. And so Tazewaiz started in the first year, and after graduation, 7 of the 14 that we started decided that we wanted to go along with the company and turn it into a cooperative. Why a cooperative? We are from the Basque region, that is the highest populated cooperative-wise in the world, and it's home to the biggest cooperative corporation in the world it's home to 86,000 employees worldwide, right, in 30 countries. Mondragón. So what we did when we came out, we were already in business, right, because we have been running it for 4 years. So we were like semi-in business, 7 of us continued. We were already paying salaries since the third year, which was one of our challenges. So some of us were like paying the university out of whatever we were making. And so we challenged the university to a little crazier idea, saying, We not only want an entrepreneurship degree that goes abroad and comes back, we want an international entrepreneurship degree that is international at core. The university, that it's a non-for-profit and it's a cooperative university, said, very good, very cool, we'll not do it, we'll support you if you do. So we said, sure, why not? That's nice, right? So, okay. And since we were the first graduates, there was very few people that knew more about the system than ourselves. So we supported the opening of the labs or the opening of the campuses in Madrid and Barcelona and Valencia and Amsterdam. And then we launched our own that's called Traveling University.

Wow. Amazing.

So we launched LANE International and that's how we came across Think Global. One of my friends that worked here and there was doing another university, had a friend that was working in Think Global. And since we are recruiting all the time, people that have exchange profiles, because the characteristic or the main feature of LANE International is that it goes abroad and itinerance. So you don't have a home, like think local. So instead of like being a bunch of Basque people going abroad and coming back and being like deaf to whatever it is outside, if you want to, you have 6 nationalities per team living first in Europe, then in America, and then in Asia for well over a year every time. This way you need to make projects and everything. And then your English becomes the common language, which doesn't mean the communication channel, because sometimes that's pretty fantastic to watch, especially in the first year. But yes, and we've kept it going throughout the pandemic. So right now we have well over 200 students scattered worldwide between—

oh, amazing—

Berlin, Korea, and Costa Rica right now. So as a co-op, we took the stand of like saying that yes, our territory was very well known worldwide. If you mention Mondragon to anyone in the co-op world, will know what you're talking about. And it even has a Harvard Business Review that's called The Miracle of Mondragón, if you want to check into it, because it's a corporation that started after the civil war by a priest in a territory that was well hated by Franco because we have our own culture, our language, our blah, blah, blahs. And so the co-ops became a tool for development, right? So Arizmendiarrieta, that is— I will not make you repeat that name because everyone hates it. Arizmendiarrieta, which actually means rock tree and mountain. So, started the co-op thinking that they needed to make a company that would allow people to take ownership of their own time and of their own work, because there was a company in the valley, in Mondragón, that is also a city, that is very— was very big but also very paternalistic. So salaries were very low, but they will include some benefits for workers, and then no one could leave because they didn't have enough money to leave, but they couldn't actually make decisions of their own or where to take their children learn or where to buy food because they only could go to the supported place, right? So, so that happened. They thought it was going to be one company of 80 people, turned out 168 companies with 85,000 people worldwide, which was fantastic. Although they do have a challenge on how to make co-ops abroad because it is a challenge to everyone and culture-wise and stuff. So I've been working in the co-op development of my company for a long time, and I'm also I'm also not only part of Taseo Ais as a worker, but I'm also the VP for Europe of the International Cooperative Alliance Youth Network, and I sit on the youth committee. So I'm the representative for Europe on the co-op for youth.

So just to clarify, so LANE International is also a cooperative as well as—

LANE International runs from Taseo Ais, so it's run by us. It's a 12-people team inside of our co-op.

I see.

And it's like a, not a joint venture, but a collaboration with Mondragon, and They stamped the title because they're an official university. So it becomes an official degree for Europe, which is an official degree worldwide. You can access a master's and a PhD afterwards, which is one of the things that we were making sure that we wanted to, to make sure that that happened for students.

Wow.

Brilliant.

Okay. So that said, when pandemic strike, we were all sent home and we're like in Spain, as you may have known, management of pandemic was at the best. And so we needed to do something. And we gathered— Mondragon had been talking with the New School in New York. And so Travel Talks, that is one of the biggest names in the field of platform co-ops, José María Lutaraga, that is part of the Mondragon, Mondragon Team Academy unit, and I gathered up and created an emergency course of platform co-ops for people worldwide that wanted to attend. In what would have taken 6 months, we did it in 3 weeks. We made sure that both universities stamped it with the diplomas for accomplishments, no credits yet, but at least a diploma for both universities. And one thing that we were super worried about was accessibility, because we knew people were losing their jobs and this course in either of the universities, because they're both private, would have cost no less than €4,000 to €6,000. We made sure that it wasn't the case and we launched it for €150 if you were in a developed country and €40 if you were in an underdeveloped country. Yeah. So we made that happen, a 15-week course on platform co-ops. We expected around 100 people per edition. It turns— had a turnout of 400 per edition from 50 countries. So it was super crazy and I was on the operations and people were happy, which made me happy. And so it was a little crazy.

That's amazing. Maybe, is it possible that we could just go into the specifics of what what it actually means, because I think many people won't have a fully clear idea of what it means.

So what is a platform co-op? It's like, if you're familiar with a cooperative to begin with, you'll know that not all the cooperatives are the same. So you have co-ops that are worker-owned like mine, where like the workers are the members and therefore decision makers. And so any kind of decision you take, it will just impact upon yourself, which for me is the utopia of a company, because if you make good decisions and you end up making profit, the profit also goes to yourself. But if you end up making loss, the loss goes to yourself, which for me is what should be, not you make profit for someone that is not working with you, or people that are making decisions don't know what the decisions means for themselves, right? So the platform co-op business started to rise years ago, but I think it's been like rising more this time of pandemic due to the gig economy. So as you know, the big tech and the gig economy, what happens is that that there are technology companies that are creating platforms that need services to deliver those services. The thing is that they don't employ the people that are giving the services. And their argument is that because they're a tech company, those jobs are not tech. Therefore, they don't need to direct employ those workers. And that is quite dangerous for the workers because they become self-employed, which means that they lose a lot of power not only at the salary level but also at very ordinary fight or work. Not be part of a union, a collective effort to fight for their rights because they are self-employed. So the platform co-ops try to break that and generate a platform where the workers become the owners and there is not an algorithm dictating whatever they want to do. And also all the benefit and the profit that it's made remains in the community and in the people that are working for it. So it's basically taking the co-op values into the platform world. And, you know, generating in most of cases is not only worker co-ops, but multi-stakeholder, right? So I'm also part of the Global Shapers community by the World Economic Forum. And although it has, I have my debate on whether this is compatible or not every time, I think that, you know, it's good to be informed. And when I hear the WEF people say, you know, multi-stakeholders is the next kind of thing. And I was like, okay, just look to co-ops and you'll find what's has existed, collars, for the last, what, 100 years?

So maybe it's— are there some good examples of companies that are already running like this?

And also there is one thing that I've been learning and I'm trying to get my head around is that it's not the same thing, a corporate that uses digital tool, that a platform co-op, which is interesting because not every co-op that uses a digital platform is a platform co-op, right?

Yeah, right.

There are platform— there are co-ops that may use an e-store or an e-shop, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the business is run through the platform. They're just doing their business and they have just one more channel of selling. That doesn't qualify as a platform co-op.

So the platform is the bringing together of—

Yeah, if I share some examples, then we get clearer examples. And although my boundaries are still quite blurry for myself. And I've been here for 1 year and a half and I'm still not like quite as certain. So the, the biggest, the one that everyone knows is Up&Go. And I think it's nice to hear it again if you are new to the movement. So welcome. So Up&Go, it's a platform co-op that use that for cleaning services in the New York metropolitan And it's made by immigrant women. Normally, I think they're mostly Latina women that were working as cleaners before, right? And they have found themselves in quite of a struggling position, not only socially, which obviously they are immigrants and we know issues, but also inside their own families, being women and working, working moms and stuff, and also economically. So they decided to launch a platform co-op together with 3 different co-ops. So 3 different co-ops that make a big platform co-op that is Up&Go. And the difficulty with the platform co-op, the non-co-op platforms is that most of the profit goes to the platform, right? So they keep around 35% of each service. So each bill around up to 35%, which is a lot. A lot. And so for a lot of restaurants, even if they're selling on a platform, they don't see the income grow because the platform keeps most of the things. So they just break even, you know, and at least they are still in business, but they are not making a profit. So what Up Go did is they developed a platform that would allow them to sell their services. And the cool thing about that is that they were co-designers of the platform. So for a long time, the designer said, okay, so we'll just put like a brief description of each person in the website. So people know who are they hiring to come into their homes. And they said, no, we don't want personal descriptions. We just want a very good description of the company and saying that we're several people because they have had previous abuse stories and some getting awkward situations at their homes or harming situations. And also because they didn't want to appear as a case of charity. So for them, it's like, oh, I'm a working mom, Latina that came, immigrant, and I want to clean your house. And it's like, oh, her, let's help her. Or people felt the right to ask them about their family, where they came from. And they were like, you don't ask regular people like, oh, you're doing a website for me. So where are you from? Are you a Latin immigrant? How are your kids?

It's true.

So yeah. So they did that and they decided, okay, we'll do it. We'll do it without that. And, and they, and suddenly they had a lot of quality on, on their hiring. They, they have a very good frontend, they backend, and they own the software as a co-op. So they own the software, they own the business, they became businesswomen in a co-op at the same time they were the ones giving the service. So again, if they make a decision of rising the salaries, they need to make a decision of working more or at least working better because they need more money to pay themselves. But if the business doesn't go well, then they need to, they need to lower their salaries, but it's their own salaries. It's not someone else's salaries. Right. And also the person that is hiring gets the business owner going into their home and knowing they do a good job. And they decided that the platform will only take 5% of the profit. So 3% goes to platform maintenance, and 2% goes to credit card bills and cost. And then the other part, the 95%, goes to salaries. This means that they are making, I think it was an average of $22 an hour, which is almost double what a normal cleaning service makes in, in the metropolitan area of New New York. And suddenly they were not only given a very good service, but back home they got the respect not only of their children and their husbands, but their community, because suddenly they were not only cleaners, but business owners. So status-wise, socially, they also raised. So it's just a combo. And I think this is a great example because it really goes to show what happens when the wealth that is generated stays in the community, and that the impact and the good labor conditions are not only for a better salary, but also a better status socially, and how that helps the people behind the worker, right?

No, that's a great example. And what's it like in terms of the starting up of that process? Because I guess they need some kind of initial seed investment, right?

The co-op law changes country to country, but the good thing on platform co-ops is that they don't need to be a co-op. It's tricky here because not every country has cooperative legislation. Japan just passed their first law on co-ops. So, and Spain has 17 corporate laws, one per region. So this is like very crazy, okay? So you either have too many or you don't have any. And anyway, it doesn't contemplate platforms, right? So for instance, the Basque law doesn't contemplate that if you are a worker-owned cooperative, you can be a worker abroad. And I'm Remember, it's tricky. I mean, there are examples, but it's not easy to manage because if you are a worker owner, this law is made for like regular companies. So who contemplated that in industry, someone that is working in a co-op was going to be in Costa Rica while the other one is in Korea and the other one's moving through Berlin and student.

Yeah.

Like this was not real because, you know, cooperative law was made for industry and regular companies that didn't envision, uh, multi-location. So suddenly just, you know, you need to go through that, all this process, rethinking of how you see co-ops, because suddenly they can be embedded and rooted in the community. There's just going to be multiple communities in each co-op. But how do we do this? You know, and this is the challenge that we're looking at right now, I think, and because the values are there. And one thing that I'm always super tough when I talk co-ops is that values are there, excellence of management is there, because we're not a nonprofit. Cooperatives can be non-for-profit, profit, but they don't need to be. My cooperative is for profit. Profit is good and we are happy to share it. And I think the difference among how you make a co-op work is not that you don't make profit. It's like, how do you, what do you do with that?

What do you do with it? Yeah.

How do you give it away? Right. And so platform co-ops are for profit. They are for impact and they are for good, but they are for profit. And I think that this is important and, you know, if there needs to We, there are a couple of challenges when we talk about platform co-ops, again, because the co-op world lacks tools for investment. It's difficult because you don't buy shares in a co-op, right? You become part of the co-ops. Like which investor do you know that wants to be part of them? And it's true. It's a fact. And so we are reinventing ways to, you know, make sure that we can raise funds in a way that people can, and how do we generate financial actors or agents that want to become that? Because I think that there are a lot of investors that are willing to be for good. The jurors are looking at co-ops weirdly because they are outside of the mainstream system, let's say. But at the end of the day, what I always say is that people have been talking about social change, social development, SDGs, bottom impact and triple impact and blah, blah, blah for so long. And then you look at a co-op and you're like, but that's what it is. It's just an embodiment of all of that together. Together. And so for me, it would be very interesting to see, okay, so you are investing in this and this other thing, why not a co-op? Because yes, maybe you're not a member, maybe you're not going to get a buyout in the next 2 years, or you're not going to do this, but you're talking impact. Are you conscious, like, how much are you impacting? Maybe it's not a scale, but it is definitely quality.

I'm curious, it sounds like platform co-ops are a way to— basically platforms are about delivering a service, using a platform to connect to people, right? That's sort of the platform economy. And then a co-op, that platform is cooperatively owned. And so the thing that Tim Logan and I are exploring is how does this apply to education? How do we think of education as a service then? Like maybe, like, what are your thoughts on a group of teachers coming together, so to speak, to offer the service this as an instructor or something like that? What might this look like in terms of education?

So there is this group of people that came out of Platform Co-ops Edition 2, I think. They created a cooperative platform co-op for teachers that's called My Cool Class. I think they've already set it up in the UK. There are people from all over the world. I think there are a couple of Polish, there's one Indonesian lady. There's so many people. And what they were looking is like, what is it that people are going to need from education right now? Because I think the first— I mean, do you know Bill Drayton from Ashoka? And he says it's not about like giving people fish or teaching people how to fish. It's how do we revolutionize the fishing industry, right? So we create systemic change. It's not only like, okay, so how do we make sure that we fit a new way of doing things in this already existing system? It's like, okay, so how do we make sure that we recreate the educational system as a whole? You know, and for me, it's understanding like, what is it that people will be looking into for education in the next years, right? So it's not like, how can we make the experience of students better, which is great, which I— that's what we're doing in Travel University. It's if we were to redesign from zero the educational system, which things do we think that need to be there and which things that we don't think? And for me, it's always been like that. I've always been like, why are we setting in age groups? Like, why are we in a place like, I don't know. Well, here because it rains, but the rest of the answers, I don't know. So, so there are a bunch of things that I was very sure. I mean, I studied in the US as an exchange student. And for me, I was very shocked. Like, oh, people like have so many choices, you know, like, I don't know how is your educational systems, but for me, it's like, you get into school. What do you want science or letters? Okay. And this is your choice. And science or literature. And then you're like, science. OK. The rest of your future is foreseen for you because you don't have a choice on curriculum. And I got to the US and people were like, OK, you need to take 4 majors and then 3 minors. I'm like, what? What is a minor? I don't know what you're talking about. So I had a chance to take physics and at the same time I could take sociology, soccer, and radio. Class. Like, what is radio class? You know, like, what are we talking about, people? And I could drop off chemistry, which for me was a nightmare. And I was like, oh, this is so awesome. Got back home after my year, and suddenly we were back to blocks. Here, science for you. You didn't take chemistry, your loss. And, and then it's like, what are we doing? You know, and, and, and I was super lucky to, to run into lane, like, lane back in the day because curriculum is very flexible, but, but we don't have the choices of going studying medicine. Like, I, I had a friend that I, that I met when I was working in India, and she was majoring in engineering in the MIT but minoring in business, and I was like, this makes so much sense, you know. It's like, if you are going to be an engineer and you're going to create your own business, you may as well learn business in school because otherwise you're lost in the next, like, what, 10 years.

Yeah.

So for me, these kinds of things are very interesting. And, and, and we've been working on education in, at the school level for long, like not only in LIS, but also like in the municipality of Bilbao, we work on, on entrepreneurship classes and I can send you some info.

Yes.

Yeah. So for me, it's, it's all about thinking of why is it that we can contribute with and which things are necessarily there. And now that we are in the digital level, for for me, one super interesting question is, how can we not just take the experience that we have offline to the online directly without rethinking which choices does the online give us that the offline didn't? Because for us to replicate the model in the online would be a mistake for me because there are certain things that will never happen online that do happen offline. And that's a fact. You cannot replicate hallway talk or coffee. Breaks or football matches.

Yeah, exactly.

Or boys and girls, hehe, chit-chatting in the breaks, right? That's not gonna happen. You can't fake that. No, there's no way. But there are other things that can happen that couldn't happen offline that it's like, can we do exchanges a lot easier? Can we give language classes with natives like right away? Like these kind of things that are super exciting and you couldn't do it because limitations, right? Physical limitations and co-ops, obviously. Obviously work. I mean, there are a bunch of schools that are co-ops. And these are multi-stakeholder already, right? Because the teachers— well, some schools, no, but at least the ones in the Basque Country, they're multi-stakeholder because the teachers and the staff are co-op members. So therefore it is a worker co-op, but the parents are members. So it's a student-parent cooperative. And then there are some companies in the area that because they contributed to the start of the school or they contribute somehow to, you know, I don't know, whatever plans of the school, they are also members. So at the end, in general assembly, you have this heterogeneous group of people that is looking for the best in the community and not only for my children or not only for my paycheck, which is super good balance, right? And you give all these people one-third of the, of the amount of votes. And one thing that we are looking at right now with a very cool teacher friend of mine is, can we create a small ecosystem inside co-op schools that create co-ops with students, even if they are age, because there are a lot of projects in economy class and things like that that are going to allow them to experiment with real economical systems, but they don't have tools because they're underage, so the parents need to pay for it. But can we create something with the Higher Council of Co-ops of the Basque Country that allows that, even if it's not like 100% official and they don't need to go into the— all the legal— but they still can generate a status? It needs to be approved. It needs to go through like, uh, the exam for tax, all this stuff that they should know. And I think that this is very cool because it gives you life skills, right? Because who of us can make their taxes in the first year they get a salary? I can't. I still can't. And I've been working for the last 10 years and it's like, I still struggle. I have no idea what to do. Either my flatmate or my father does it for me or helps me do it. And they will learn how to do it before they're 18, which is great.

The, the other thing I think it does as well that I've noticed is that one of the biggest challenges is the communication and the negotiation around decision-making, right? And clearly that's a life skill for students as well. And I think generally that seems to be one of the challenges of co-ops, whether it's adults or children, is actually how do you help them to be efficient and kind of swift at decision-making so that you can move quickly and adapt as you need to rather than getting stuck in this like quicksand, you know, because you've got so many people involved in the decision-making process.

Process.

I think if I can just jump in, I think one of the advantages for in a co-op then is that the decisions you make have immediate consequences for yourself because, you know, you have a vested interest, whereas any other exercise with students is always going to be academic. There are no consequences.

Yeah, right, that's true.

Yeah, so you can't really make a real decision then because there are no consequences, right?

Yeah, and I think that, for example, what will be very cool— maybe I'm getting too created. One thing that I think will be very cool, I feel like, because I'm fully sure that a school can be run out of a platform co-op, even if like generate a platform co-op that is online and it has an offline space that supports that online service, right? So you can run the school through the platform co-op. Why is this? Because I think that there's so much data that we miss in school, right? So the management, right? Right now, it's group management, right? You create your groups and everything, but in an online profile that it's able to generate data. Because one thing that is very cool about platform co-ops is that we're talking like an Uber that you said before, like Uber has a platform that does Uber service, but it's a platform co-op. And for example, it works in Canada, it's called Eva and the whole backend works in blockchain, but there's also drivers.coop in New York that they're launching not so long ago. But what they do is not only do they work as a platform for the workers and, and the service, they also capture data and they have another revenue stream through the data because they can work with the municipality of New York and they give them the traffic data as Uber does, except the profit of that data selling, it's actually for the workers.

Yeah.

And then there's another one that does data management on health that is in Switzerland and it's called Medata. And so I think that in schools this happens too, because imagine that you You can support the platform in an offline setting rather than an online setting supporting your offline. I think it's super cool, you know, it's turning around and how do you do it? And then you'll understand which kind of classes do people like, which kind of skills they need to get. And then if it's a parent and worker school together, so it's a multi-stakeholder, uh, Mondragon has created what it's called social council for those co-ops that are too big. And then its social council representative goes back to their departments and then shares with all the workers and brings in them into the board, the concerns of the workers. And I think it could be like a student council that has direct impact in the structure and decision-making. And it's there during the board times. If they, for some reason, we don't find like a loophole in the law where they can actually have a vote in general assembly, assembly, which for me is the utopia, right? Because students sometimes, they— people will say, oh, you know, students will only vote to have more freedom and less schoolwork and less blah blah, but that's not real. That's not real. Like, in Team Academy and in Lane, we have the proof. In most of cases, we rate ourselves lower than our coach would. We even fail ourselves knowing that you need to pay for the credits. So, so that's something, you know. And so So when you create peer-to-peer groups of like learners and stuff, people learn to be accountable. And this is another skill that people learn, you know, like what happens when you demand some stuff? What if it's given to you? Like, no, no challenge accepted. So I think it's a cool thing that, you know, we'll create like a platform co-op that runs a school, but that is supported by an offline structure.

Yeah. Nice. Good. A lot to think about.

I want to be part of it.

Yeah, you should be.

Yeah.

So just as a final thing, if somebody was interested in this and they're listening to this in whichever country, what's the best starting point, I guess, is the question.

Okay. So for me, entrepreneurship has been super hard. Like, I'm not being dramatic, people. It's hard. It's a tough job. So if you're willing to create any kind of company, forget only a platform co-op, anything, don't do it alone. And for me, the legend of the lonely entrepreneur is a fake. No one does it alone. And whoever says they did, they're lying. So my advice is don't do it alone. Like find people that you want to do it with because your, your journey is going to be much better. The tricky part of that is that normally you'll tend to do it with people that are so similar to you. Do it with people that are also very radically opposite than you and that you may as well not like in the very beginning, which happened to us. That's good. And I think they bring a skillset that you don't necessarily have, not only at the background level, but at the personal level and the way to much crisis and stuff. Obviously, you're going to be needing some learning of hard skills, right? So you're going to need knowledge, but don't let the fact that you don't know about something stop you. For me, everyone's ready to be an entrepreneur. Just is the energy that you want to put into it that counts. And I think that, you know, yes, you need to find finance. You'll learn finance, you'll learn accountability, you'll learn tax, you'll learn even technology. And I'm speaking from the very Technology for Dummies perspective here. And I tell you that you're not going to be a coder if you don't know code, but you are going to be able to learn enough to have a positive conversation. And everyone should know that platform co-ops and any platforms work because they work for the users. So everyone brings a very valuable perspective of usability and, you know, capacity of learning. Also, if you are willing to create a platform co-op, make sure that you know what's going on in your country and approach people that are working in the model in your country. There's people everywhere. And I say everywhere because we've run a course with 400 people in 50 different countries and there's always someone. And if not, they're close. If not, you can just come to us platform.coop and you'll find us and we can send you to your country, to your people, or at least your field and make sure that you don't try to replicate what's already done because most of the times the platform co-op style of growing is replication. So people are happy to support you replicating a model that is working in some other country. So I think this is super cool and very, very different from the capitalistic perspective where competition becomes something. Here probably it's not going to grow as much, but it's going to grow together and, and, you know, in a way of replicating. So in that sense, feel free to reach out to people that are doing things that are similar to yours, maybe join them, support them, or use their knowledge. Knowledge. And another thing that we are fighting for, and this is me taking up on the words of some of the Argentinian people, one thing that is special for the platform co-ops is the software. And, you know, when you create platforms, most of the people need huge amounts of investment. But one of the things that we're looking into is how do we create an accessible software making for co-ops. And I think that if you are developing software or you have the means or the tools or the money investment, of the— to develop software and do it right, then be thoughtful of people that may not have your resources and maybe make it open for co-ops. There is a specific Creative Commons that goes for co-ops where capitalistic companies cannot use the software, but co-ops can. And we are really looking forward to see which kind of usage rights we can, we can give to software, because there are a lot of people struggling to, you know, get, get their development Lucy Stevens is the founder, co-headteacher, and charity director of The New School in Southeast London.

With experience gained from a background in teaching, degrees in social psychology, nutritional therapy, and herbal medicine, time spent working at The Prince's Trust with marginalized young people, and having two of her own children, Lucy has focused her attention on what an alternative democratic model of education could look like. She founded The New School to put research into practice, to challenge the current paradigm, and to address the many deeply entrenched problems in education and society. Lucy starts by giving us an overview of The New School.

So The New School is a democratic school. It's in Southeast London. We're an educational charity charity as well as being a school. And we're set up as a private school, but we're non-fee-paying. So very strange anomaly in the system. We focus on kind of young people's voice and choice in their education. And I suppose a couple of things that make us different are our funding model and also the fact that we are using an alternative way of holding our school accountable. So we've built an outcomes framework that focuses on the ultimate aim being that young people will leave our school with a strong sense of personal agency. So we mean that they've got a sense of purpose, they've got goals, they've got all of the skills they need to action those goals. And then we measure 4 key outcomes. So we're looking at self-esteem, self-efficacy, the belief I've got the skills to do what I want, educational engagement, and life satisfaction. Because when you look across kind of data on outcomes gaps and disadvantage, you see kind of these areas. Come up over and over again. And so what we wanted to do was to be able to show impact across those areas. And in order to do that, we need a comprehensive intake of young people. So I guess, where did the idea come from? I mean, my original career was teaching. I then worked with young people, not in education, training, and employment, at that kind of 14 to 16 year old level. And thinking, you know, gosh, if you've been outside a system for so long, how hard it is to kind of reintegrate back into that. And, and almost remember what you were interested in when you were 4 and 5. And then I had my own kids and I thought, you know, what do I want for them? You know, they've potentially from age 4 got 12 years ahead of them inside a system, if that's what I choose, as opposed to like a homeschooling type route. You know, what do I want them to have at the end of that? And what experience do I want them to have? And I thought, you know, really, I want them to just know who they are. I want them to have a sense of identity. I want them to be able to articulate their thoughts and their feelings and have a voice and be able to interact with a world of difference and resolve conflict. And I want them to have the skills to learn. And for me, I think at the end of the day, numbers on a piece of paper, because in the UK it's GCSEs and our numbers, how do we know how relevant they're going to be in 12 years' time? You know, we've got rapidly changing global future. We've got job roles that are possibly going to be redundant really soon. Actually, isn't it much better to have those skills of personal agency that says, hey, you know what, I'm 30, I need a maths GCSE to access this course for, you know, my professional development to take me here, or actually I'm going to go back to art school and I've got all of the skills and time management and planning and ability to follow something through. To achieve what it is that I want. And so that's where I started from and kind of researching different educational models. It was kind of democratic education that for me really brought to life that. We opened with 4 to 11-year-olds, so primary school, because we wanted a cross-section, because obviously we really value young people's voice. When you're kind of making decisions, you need that kind of age range, and we really value mixed age classes. And then And then we've grown kind of from there. So we're in our second academic year. So we've now got a Year 7, and in September we'll have a Year 8, and we're kind of infilling.

Brilliant.

Oh yeah, we— when we're full, it will be up to 16.

Yeah, amazing. And just on the location, what brought you to the community? Was it already your community where you were, where you decided to base yourselves? What was the connection?

Yeah, I mean, I grew up in South London, but I wasn't living particularly near the area. But, you know, it took a really long time to get the school off the ground. And part of that reason was the building.

Yeah.

So I had various different ideas as to how we were going to try and find a building that could house a school, you know, everything from buying a commercial property and kind of getting change of use on it and things like that. Because, you know, I mean, London, but anywhere really prime site and actually having to change it into an educational establishment is very costly. And then call it divine intervention or whatever. But because the school took a while, I started my oldest child, I started homeschooling. And so I was going to a lot of homeschool groups and someone just said, oh, you know, there's a homeschool project that they use part of an old primary school. So I was like, so I went to see them and he said, yeah, actually our project's coming to an end in July. You should definitely go and speak to it. So this, there's a convent that owns this site. You should go and speak to the sister. You know, she really loves what we're doing. I've given her a copy of Paulo Freire's book and you know, she doesn't want to use it as a school anymore because she got a bit burned by the school that was in there before. But, you know, you might be able to kind of sway her. So he kind of helped me connect with the sister who said, okay, well, yep, go on then, give it a go.

Amazing.

So we literally have— I mean, it's very old, but it was a primary school. And when we got here, there was still a lot of the stuff. They'd almost just sort of closed the doors.

Wow.

So all these old books and, you know, some of the furniture as well, which was amazing. So yeah, it couldn't have been more amazing.

So All right. So let's talk about the funding model, because that's what I think is just so interesting about what you're doing, because it's like, where's the money?

Yeah.

And we move the money across to pay for the thing we want to pay for while creating outcomes that other people need and are willing to pay for. Right. Let's do that.

Yeah. I love the way that you're describing this. Yeah. That, that's kind of what we're doing.

Good.

A weird anomaly in the system is what I describe it as.

Yeah, but those weird anomalies in the system have to be tried, right? It's kind of my, my take.

I think it's that, yeah, I mean, I suppose from my perspective, it's, it's how do you innovate in a system that is designed not to innovate?

Exactly.

Yeah.

And therefore, yes, you've got to find an unusual way of trying to test solutions in the system and find a way that actually the system system can at some point meet you kind of where you're at. That's kind of where we're going.

But this idea of social outcomes commissioning, right? So did that happen in stages in terms of kind of this outcomes framework came first and then you started thinking where that might take you, or did, did the outcomes framework come out of the funding concept?

Yeah. So at the point where I thought I can't find the school that I want for my kids, so I thought I'm going to have to build and I thought all the alternative schools in the UK are fee-paying and I didn't want that for them. And I didn't want that for other children who I thought this model would be most to their advantage. And so I thought, you know, how do you make a school non-fee-paying without parents paying or the state paying? And, you know, philanthropy only goes so far because a school is a sinkhole from my money. So I was looking and I just came across a school in Doncaster and Doncaster Local Authority are really, really innovative in the way they think about education. And they had decided to set up a school to meet some of the needs they had in the local authority with innovation unit, borrowing a model from the US called Big Picture Learning. And by its original conception, it was a private school. There's various reasons why it's not anymore, but they used a social impact bond and raised £6 million to open this school. So I thought, okay, so if it's been done once, it can be done again. And so thinking about that, but also thinking about how do you make change within a system? Because for me, it's not just about this one school. We're a model in action, but how can we take this learning and actually make an impact on and assist it. And, you know, I think the only way you can do that really is by data and research, but also by showing the cost benefit of that model. And not to say that it's— I mean, our model is actually more expensive, but, you know, being able to demonstrate the reasons why and why actually that's better, because then further down the line you make savings on kind of health, social care costs, things like like that. So from that point, that was kind of a dual track, I suppose. So we start— I started to build with our impact specialist the kind of outcomes that we'd be looking at to kind of put the model and the framework and theory of change, I suppose, around it, whilst also working with someone in, you know, the kind of social investment stuff who actually did structure that social impact bond. I don't know if we will use a social impact bond. They're hugely complicated. Sometimes really unnecessarily, but commissioning can be done, you know, without that anyway. So, you know, our local authorities in the UK, we commission already, but they tend to commission places for challenging kids or for those with additional needs. So there is that.

When you say commissioning, what do you mean by commissioning?

So they will commission places. So for example, if they've got a, you know, a young person with particular needs, they'll commission a place at the local pupil referral unit, or they'll commission a place at the special needs school. So that's how those schools get funded. They don't have that necessarily just doing—

the money comes associated with a particular child.

Yeah, well, the local authority pays part of that place. Yeah, yeah. So that, that is already there, but then it's for us about working kind of closely with the local authority to say, you know, we're not a special needs school, we're not a pupil referral unit. Yes, we have all of those young people within a mix of kind of a comprehensive demographic. Now how do we think differently about your budgets and how you can be perhaps more innovative with them because, you know, we know you've got X, Y, Z problems. We can meet at least X and Y, possibly all of them. Let's work to create a sort of funding model that works.

That's the social outcomes commissioning concept.

And that's the social outcome commissioning concept. You can do it with a rate card where you kind of put price against particular outcome. You can do it with like a full kind of social impact bond model And what are the kinds of, you say XYZ, what are those XYZs?

I mean, what social outcomes are you talking about there? Health outcomes, social mobility. What, what does that mean in practice?

So for a local authority, when they're interested for us to meet their kind of priorities, their priorities are very much around, you know, young people that are square pegs in the round in kind of mainstream, mental health and anxiety needs, homeschoolers, because they don't have legal responsibility for their education, but they have to supervise. And it's, it's a real challenge for local authorities to do that. And we have a rising number of homeschoolers. Our school is hugely popular with homeschoolers. So those are kind of their sort of priorities. And we meet those needs in the sense that, you know, nearly 75% of our intake are homeschoolers. We have, in a relational environment, we are very good at supporting kind of mental health and anxiety and things things like that. So it's about helping them to see that their priorities are met by what we're offering.

Yeah.

And then the outcomes that they're often interested in can be quite typical. So although our outcomes are around self-esteem, self-efficacy, their outcomes are still around attendance, behaviour, you know, things like that. So, you know, all of the things that we can demonstrate as well. But so for them, we're still meeting a need for the cohort, I suppose.

And so your outcomes that you are focusing on, those 4 outcomes you laid out, is that set of outcomes tied to the charity fundraising model for the first 3 years? Like, how have you articulated the pitch, I suppose, to that charity fundraising part? Because as I as I understand it, you're doing 3 years' worth of philanthropy charity fundraising, right? And then moving across, and that will provide you with the data to then demonstrate the efficacy to then move across to this social outcomes commissioning.

Yeah.

Is that correct?

Yes. It's more fluid than that though. It's more fluid than that.

Yeah.

So that is the aim. That's the hypothesis. But yeah, so whilst we, you know, we need kind of this amount of philanthropy, you know, whilst we've got no contracts. And then, you know, that as philanthropic input tapers, kind of local authority picks up.

And the philanthropic will taper just because of need, because you need it less, you will look for less of it. And so that's, that's more in your control, whereas obviously the other part is in less in your control, but your, your outcomes demonstrated will support you in getting those.

I think for us, for us, our outcomes first and foremost are for us to see if we're accountable to our model. So they're our kind of stretch targets, you know, that's if we're doing it well. Of course we can tell you about the attainment and the attendance and the behaviour, whatever, but actually that's what we're focusing on. So what, I mean, in an ideal world, what we'd love to see is that actually schools can start to hold themselves accountable to a much broader set of outcomes as opposed to just standardised test scores. So it's demonstrating in action a way of doing that and a way of measuring something different that meets the vision for our education model.

Nice. How are you demonstrating those? What metrics or, you know, what mechanisms are you using to demonstrate those?

Yeah, so we use a couple of standardized tests, so questionnaires. So we use the Boxall Profile, which is teachers filled in. We use PASS survey, which is young people filled in thinking about their feelings and thoughts about school and home and learning and things like that. We use a My Outcomes survey. And then we also have kind of operationally, we have a My Learning Plan process where young people set their own goals around social emotional things. And then they decide whether they've met those goals or not. We've obviously then got the other, you know, benchmarkable data, kind of attainment things things like that. And then on top of that, we bring in kind of qualitative research as well to kind of round it out. So for our first year, we put tender out and Nottingham University School of Education did an evaluation on our model.

Ah, brilliant.

So they were bringing in family case studies, young people case studies, staff focus groups, things like that. And they found that the number one kind of change with the model was around wellbeing of young people. And then what we didn't expect to find actually was a knock-on effect on the wellbeing of the family as a result of change in wellbeing of the child. And then they also did our first kind of cost-benefit analysis as part of that as well.

Brilliant.

And then this year UCL have approached us. So we're hopefully going to do a piece of work with them as well. So that just to kind of give the qualitative element as well.

Yeah.

Yeah. Good. Cause I mean, you don't want to be a slave to the quantitative methods. Metrics. I mean, that's one of the reasons for getting outside the system is not to be so slavishly attached to those, right?

Absolutely. And I think, you know, what would be so interesting for me if it were ever possible, like, you know, accountability isn't the problem. Ofsted and the way that the framework is devised as a tick box exercise, and you know, the person who walks through the door for that 2 or 3 days judgment is part— is the problem. But actually, if every school could be held account by an independent evaluation, wouldn't that be so much more useful?

Interesting.

And much more reliable, I think. And actually help the development of the school.

Yeah.

You know, if the school was super clear what their theory of change was and what their kind of data showed, and then you've got a qualitative element that's like, okay, you know, almost like a think tank report, I suppose, here are recommendations off the back of what we've found.

Amazing. Yeah. I mean, that's a brave new world, right? It would be amazing.

It comes back to money again, doesn't it? It's always back to money.

Yeah. No, it is. But I think also it comes down to, as you say, a school having a theory of change. Even that is a kind of a big step forward, right? Because, well, for a lot of schools, they don't question their purpose.

Yeah.

It's an academic purpose primarily, right? It's about how do we get content, some skills, competency into these children in these particular areas that we've all kind of generally agreed of, you know, pretty much where we want and then done. That's our job.

Yeah.

And all the other stuff happens as a byproduct if you're lucky.

Yeah.

But it's not an intentional part of a theory of change related to an intervention in young people's lives. And that's where I I think it's so interesting, yeah, what you're doing because you're taking that— I mean, in some ways there's, of course, there's that language and there's that attitude and approach in the voluntary sector already, right?

Yeah.

In the way that international development works or local community development works, they have to do that because there isn't such a rigid system within which they're working, perhaps, that, you know, they're identifying their outcomes and then demonstrating, did we achieve what we set out to achieve. Whereas we've had this kind of false consensus perhaps about what we're doing in education and well, everybody understands it, of course. So let's just crack on.

And I think, I think, you know, I mean, for me is that there's probably no point debating it over and over again, whether the system's broken, whether it's not. I mean, for me, I think we've designed exactly the system that we want. You know, we want a logic model. We want, if we put this in, we get that out and they're going to be the workforce of the future. Future. And so we need to— they've borrowed the logic of the private sector about accountability and standardization and the kind of concept that if you give everyone the same, they've had the same opportunity, then, you know, if they don't achieve what they're supposed to achieve, yeah, well, they've had that. You've had the opportunity to do it. You didn't take it. You know, it's the bell curve. It only caters to the middle. You know, you want a standardized process. Education isn't standard. Young people aren't standard, and what we need in the future is not standard. So you can't continue with a system— you can continue with it, I suppose, and that's why we're trying to find innovations around it— but actually I think you will continue to disadvantage people within that. You'll continue to fail a third of people. And I think what often people forget, you know, the government can continually talk about levelling up and how we need to get every young person to a, you know, a 4 in English, but by the nature of a grading system, you can't get 100% of people to a grade 4. You have to have some that have failed. So, you know, it's just empty words.

Yeah, exactly. It's a really, I mean, yeah. When you, when you make that transparent, it's a deeply rigged system. The failure is inevitable. It's written into the DNA of the system. Right. Just one thing I'd love to just ask you, what did you say? 75% of the families were homeschooling?

Homeschooling.

That I find really interesting. Just in— maybe you can speak to that just briefly in relation to why is that? What have they come for and what were they not getting? Kind of two sides of the same thing from homeschooling that they're now finding in your context.

Yeah, I mean, homeschoolers are not a homogenous group. So sort of within the former homeschoolers, I guess you've got those from kind of an ideological perspective that really value more freedom for a child, more autonomy, more sense of, you know, finding who you are. But it's very challenging and hard to do it at home sometimes. So actually, you know, their reasoning for keeping children home is that there isn't an option. And then once an option that, you know, meets more of those needs, suddenly those children are back in a school system. We've also got the ones that are homeschooling because they've had such horrendous time in mainstream school that actually their mental health has got so bad that the parent has just decided to take them out. Actually, when you're less focused on, you know, academics for 6 hours a day and behavioural policies that can be deeply traumatic, that, you know, these young people thrive. I think it can also be the ones with additional special needs that are either undiagnosed or unmet, and then we do have some unfortunately from off-rolling where the school has simply said, "We'll either expel your child or you can take them out." And so yeah, it seems that we have found a niche. We do have to be careful to maintain the comprehensive demographic though within that because we're not a special needs school, we're not a pupil referral unit, and so you do have to kind of take care to to keep the comprehensive nature, I think.

Yeah. And I think that feels to me like it's quite a universal experience in this space of an alternative to the mainstream system, because by definition, the people whose needs were not being met by the mainstream system look elsewhere.

Yeah.

And those, as you say, there's a range of different needs unmet. But yeah, interesting. The only other thing, point I was just thinking there, and I I mean, maybe this is a kind of generalisation on my part, but there's also perhaps written into the whole decision-making process of enrolling in your school, there is an engagement of the parents. And sometimes, I don't want to generalise, but part of the challenge for young people is that they don't have that support structure at home with engaged family who are advocating on their behalf to make different choices. I wonder, I don't know, is that something you've thought about in relation to meeting unmet needs, I suppose, but that are not even being voiced by the parents or the family perhaps?

Yeah, I think, I think that's a very fair point. I think that's probably true. I don't have any data to back that up. I think it comes back to kind of, you know, the definition of disadvantage is not homogenous either, because actually if we only measure it by free school meal meals, or you know, you don't really get a sense of that and what the kind of the home engagement's like. That's not to say that we don't have young people here with really complex family lives though, so there is still, you know, that need and want to look for something different. I think that's kind of another factor for wanting to show different outcomes though, because what I often hear kind of with sort of friends and family is, you know, a fear around, well, what if they don't get GCSEs? You know, that, that's the path to the future. Or it sounds like a lovely idea, but, you know, I think they're all right actually, and, you know, that they quite like school. Or we haven't really had any problems. I mean, she hates reading, she hates maths, she hates all of that, but actually generally, you know. And so, and it's the fear of something different that actually potentially has an unknown outcome because we're so ingrained in all of us that actually GCSEs, then A levels, then kind of university is the path to kind of big salaries and/or kind of, you know, good job.

Happiness.

That's it, right?

Yeah. And yet when you ask all parents, what do you want most for your child? Want them to be happy.

Yeah. Yeah.

So it's, it's quite interesting how we, if there's ever a time where that mindset will start to be challenged.

Yeah.

Yeah. But as we were saying before, being an example, when you get to that point, you are then an example of saying this works. I mean, as you were rigorously setting out, it's like we've got to gather that data during the process in order to make that strong case stronger than you'd have to otherwise in some ways, because the onus is on you to have to prove your concept. Say this is an alternative, but it's an alternative that works.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think, I think what's so, what's most important for us, you if there's, like you've just pointed out, there's a number of different ways of doing it differently and you've got your own way of doing it and thinking about it, you know, that it's not that our way is the best way, it's that we have to be able to find a way to crack the system open to allow innovation within it because actually how can we ever understand what models work best for which children and which solutions we want. And is it ever going to be a one-size-fits-all? I don't think it is. I think you're going to need a portfolio of models within each local authority, obviously all held accountable, but you know, that offer that can meet the needs of individuals. And so I think if we end up doing our job well, we not only have a robust model to show, but what we've done is show how you you can put a model into the existing system.

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