Educashun, Educashun, Educashun

I live in a really nice area. Pretty terraces. lots of trees, a park on the doorstep, lovely primary schools and just a short cycle ride to town - middle class heaven. Sadly the nearest deli is 20 mins walk away but we just have to be a little organised with the Ocado shop and use the Spar for emergencies.
The only drawback is the lack of a really local secondary school. There are five secondaries less than a mile away but two are church run, one is far too rough for the delicate children of this area, one is private (and girls only) and the fifth, well the fifth is fine but just because all the local kids who wanted places there have got places there in the past doesn't mean our children will get in - and they do have to cross several roads to get there. It just isn't good enough. What can we do?
Luckily those nice Conservatives have a brilliant solution! We could start our own school. There is some wasteland we could use or maybe we could convert a shop - in New York they use a restaurant during the day so lets just be creative. OK there is the small matter of a 25% cut in the local education budget but as long as our kids are ok what does it matter?
Michael Grove says lots and lots of teachers are in favour of this brilliant solution and they even want to start their own schools too where they can get rid of all that nasty paperwork and just teach creatively free of targets and standardised assessments. Perfect. Sadly no one seems to have told the local teachers this, they seem to be very negative about the idea. Their loss.
We will of course be open to all but keep the intake local - just because the area is mostly middle class professionals and the interested parents are so far middle class professionals simply doesn't make our admissions policy exclusive. As long as the parents support our academically adventurous curriculum and are prepared to spend lots of time supporting us all are welcome. How we will achieve the academically adventurous curriculum with our target of just 30 children in a year when private schools of similar sizes are closing all over the country despite 3 times as much money per pupil is something we will worry about later. Managing games, science labs and DT is also something we will worry about at some other time.
Apparently the LTA only spends about 2% of the budget on centralised administration which will be hard to match, plus someone will have to organise pensions and payroll. Luckily some company is bound to competitively quote to organise all the dull stuff leaving us free to do the fun stuff. What do you mean privatisation by the back door?