1. Co-operative schools Where are we now?
Where are we today?

2. Chief Executive and Principal Co-operative College, UK
Mervyn Wilson
Good afternoon.
My name is Julie Thorpe and I am Head of School and Youth Programmes at the Co-operative College in the UK.
Chief Executive and Principal
Co-operative College, UK

3. Co-operatives and government
The current context:
Coalition government’s ‘Big Society’
“A co-op has a flexibility and dynamism that a central state agency lacks. Like the Rochdale Pioneers, a co-op is part of the community it serves. Its interests are their interests. And it is able to respond to the needs of the community immediately and directly.”
- David Cameron
As you will know we have had a major change of government in the UK this year. Co-operatives have traditionally been the preserve of the left in the UK but that dichotomy is rapidly disappearing as the new right-of-centre coalition is out recruiting amongst the co-operative and social enterprise sectors to find people and structures which will deliver its vision of what they call the ‘Big Society’.
They are promising: “to put more power and opportunity into people’s hands. We want to give citizens, communities and local government the power and information they need to come together, solve the problems they face and build the Britain they want. We want society – the families, networks, neighbourhoods and communities that form the fabric of so much of our everyday lives – to be bigger and stronger than ever before. Only when people and communities are given more power and take more responsibility can we achieve fairness and opportunity for all.”
They have recognised that this vision has a great deal in common with the values and principles of the co-operative movement and, as this quote from David Cameron makes clear, they are keen to jump onto the co-operative bandwagon.

4. Co-operative schools A co-operative governance structure
A co-operative ethos
A co-operative curriculum
A co-operative pedagogy
Fairtrade has been a popular business sector for many Young Co-ops. It provides many opportunities for relevant enterprise activities such as running school tuck shops and juice bars whilst at the same time promoting awareness of ethical issues in the supply chains which link our own children to the lives of children in the developing world.
Sir Thomas Boughey High School in Staffordshire have been running a Young Co-operative for several years, promoting Fairtrade. They have recently linked up with a small group of people in Alexandra Township on the outskirts of Johannesburg in South Africa who supply the school co-op with a range of modestly priced jewellery items. The jewellery makers are veteran guerrilla flighters from the ANC’s struggle to overthrow the apartheid regime. Today they are unemployed and have formed a co-operative to create employment for themselves. The school students in the UK not only purchase the jewellery at a wholesale price but they send a ‘premium’ payment back to the veterans from the surplus they make – their own direct co-op-to-co-op Fairtrade arrangements.

5. Co-operative schools
108 schools in Co-operative trusts at 1st November 2010
120+ by January 2011
2 Co-operative Academies – sponsored by the Co-operative Group – in Manchester and Stoke on Trent
Schools Co-operative Society – National Network operational
Co-operative models for type 2 academies and free schools under development

6. Co-operative Trust Schools

7. Schools Co-operative Society
Schools Co-operative Society established
Workstreams on Voice and Vision and Procurement
KPMG secondee working on SCS business plan
Fairtrade has been a popular business sector for many Young Co-ops. It provides many opportunities for relevant enterprise activities such as running school tuck shops and juice bars whilst at the same time promoting awareness of ethical issues in the supply chains which link our own children to the lives of children in the developing world.
Sir Thomas Boughey High School in Staffordshire have been running a Young Co-operative for several years, promoting Fairtrade. They have recently linked up with a small group of people in Alexandra Township on the outskirts of Johannesburg in South Africa who supply the school co-op with a range of modestly priced jewellery items. The jewellery makers are veteran guerrilla flighters from the ANC’s struggle to overthrow the apartheid regime. Today they are unemployed and have formed a co-operative to create employment for themselves. The school students in the UK not only purchase the jewellery at a wholesale price but they send a ‘premium’ payment back to the veterans from the surplus they make – their own direct co-op-to-co-op Fairtrade arrangements.

8. Co-operation works!
“The school’s specialist status and strong links to the Co-operative movement have had a major impact on standards and achievement, which have improved considerably in the last two years”.

9. A co-operative curriculum
Programmes with skills-based awarding body
Stepping Stones
Key Steps
Enterprise Award
Certificate of Personal Effectiveness
Over the past two years we have developed a suite of accreditations for our Young Co-operatives and others taking part in co-operative activities in school. ASDAN, a national awarding body who focus on skill development, have assisted us in developing a nationally-recognised ‘Young Co-operatives Enterprise Award’ which provides a formal recognition of the skills and experience which our Young Co-operative members develop. Together with the ‘Certificate in Personal Effectiveness through Co-operative Studies’ in which students explore co-operative values through a range of research, projects, visits, and practical activities, they can achieve an additional GCSE qualification.
Many schools have found that the practical, hands-on, learning which these schemes provide is particularly suited to students who find more a more academic approach challenging, however others run these programmes for all ability groups.

10. Young Co-operatives Website Accreditation Free resources Three models
For five years now we have been running a small programme supporting schools who wished to set up student co-operatives. The scheme is called Young Co-operatives and it has grown considerably over the last couple of years with the additional resourcing available from the Enterprise Network.
We don’t have the capacity to send our own staff into every school which wants to set up a Young Co-operatives group but we are able to provide free resources - an Action Kit which includes classroom activities and resources for the group to use in setting up their enterprise and running it as a co-operative business, along with specialist materials to introduce a number of different business ‘themes’. Currently these support businesses promoting Fairtrade, growing and marketing horticultural produced, and turning waste materials into something useful again.
The way the co-ops are run will vary considerably from one school to another. Some of the businesses will run just for a term, or one year, as an educational experience – with each new year group starting again from scratch and experiencing the process of developing from an initial enterprise concept through to a fully fledged co-operative business. In other schools the businesses established are passed on from one cohort of students to the next.
To give a flavour of the type of things they do I have three short case studies.

11. Ethical Enterprise Challenge
Earlier this year we launched the first of what we hope will become an annual celebration of our Young Co-operatives achievements with the Ethical Enterprise Challenge. This year’s challenge was to set up and run an ethical business venture for a minimum of one month during the spring of this year. At the celebration event the students taking part had to set up a trade stand, run an activity related to their project for the other participants, and make a presentation evaluating the success of their co-operative business. The businesses this year ranged from a t-shirt design co-op to a jam making business! Everyone who took part had a very enjoyable time and all the students from the different schools made good friendships and appreciated and supported each other’s efforts. The Challenge will be back next year – and the theme will be ‘promoting co-operative values’.

12. A co-operative pedagogy
Lipson Community College
I would like to finish with a short case study of one of the early Co-operative Trust Schools. Lipson Community College is located in a relative poor community in Plymouth in far south west of England. Since becoming a Co-operative Trust they have used a values-driven approach to achieve very significant improvements in the performance of the school. Their Young Co-operatives include a dance group, a ‘Big Band’ and an on-site hairdressing salon. Parental involvement with the school is high and is facilitated through a ‘Parent Portal’ section of their website and a Parent Voice Forum. The school have developed their own co-operative pedagogy drawing extensively on Kagen’s ‘brain friendly teaching’ approaches. They are using the ASDAN accredited qualifications and have adopted co-operative values at the core of their pastoral support programme.
The results so far include excellent improvements in academic achievement at both GCSE (16) and A level (18).
Record attendance statistics – exceeding the national average
14 members of staff enrolling on Masters programmes
A categorisation of ‘outstanding’ from the government inspection body Ofsted
and an international award for the Principal for ‘Vision for 21st Century Learning’ – based on co-operative pedagogy.

13. Values-driven schools
Co-operative whole-school ethos
Deeply embedded values
Raising standards
Whilst our work within the curriculum and amongst school students is important it has had an even more significant spin off. In 2006 our government introduced new legislation which allowed schools in the state sector to move from the control of the local government to be run, instead, by independent charitable trusts, taking with them the land and assets of the school. My colleagues at the College developed a legal model where this Trust is controlled by a multi-stakeholder co-operative. The members of this co-op are the parents, staff, and students of the school, along with other organisations representing the local community. Built into the constitution of the Trust is a commitment to conduct the running of the school (both its curriculum and its governance) in accordance with the values and principles set out in the ICA Statement of Co-operative Identity.

14. International linking
Lesotho
South Africa
Tanzania
Bahrain
France
Portugal
Spain
Sweden
Poland
International linking
I have already mentioned the link between Sir Thomas Boughey School and the South African freedom fighters. We are looking for further ways to expand the global dimension of our Young Co-operatives scheme. I will give a few examples of the ways we are doing this:
For the last three years we have taken groups of students to participate in an annual Youth and Student Co-operatives Forum in Lesotho in southern Africa where they spend a week living and working with young co-operators from very different backgrounds;
We are linking up three schools in Yorkshire with three schools in Kwa Zulu Natal in South Africa with the aim of developing join co-operative enterprise projects between the two groups;
We are just starting a training programme for teachers and youth workers in the gulf state of Bahrain who want to begin a co-operative enterprise education programme there;
We have worked with our Italian friends from Legacoop on a pan-European co-operative development project involving students from Italy, UK, Spain, and Poland.

15. mervyn@co-op.ac.uk www.co-op.ac.uk www.youngco-operatives.coop
I hope that this short tour of the work going on in the UK at the interface between schools and co-operatives has been of interested and I would be very happy to provide further information on our work to anyone who wishes to contact me, or you can find out more at both these websites.