Nonprofits want to save schools in vulnerable areas

Fourteen years ago, Emil Mattsson was involved in the creation of one of the AcadeMedia educational group’s upper secondary schools, which quickly became one of the best performing schools in Gothenburg. But over the years as the school’s principal, something stuck with him, he says.

– We had students from all over Gothenburg. But I saw that young people from vulnerable areas did not have the same conditions to succeed. It was obvious that the quality of the school in these areas was not high enough and it was too sad to watch, he says.

After five years, he abruptly left the school world and became director of the Rescue Mission in Gothenburg.

The organization is best known for its work with the homeless, but also in recent years it has started organizing homework help and holiday activities for students in vulnerable areas such as Lövgärdet and Biskopsgården.

Emil Mattsson now wants to go one step further.

– We can no longer simply do leisure activities, we must enter the core of well-being. We want to show that change is possible. It is not a natural law that schools in vulnerable areas should fail, he says.

After several years of planning The Rescue Mission will open its first elementary school this fall. No profit, no queues and in the middle of an area that the police have classified as particularly vulnerable: near Opaltorget in Tynnered.

A stone’s throw away is a large municipal school that has been empty for several years. It was suspended in 2016 because the results, despite the large investments year after year, remained low.

But Emil Mattsson is convinced that Rescue Mission can succeed where the public sector has failed.

– The difference is that we are guided by values. We firmly believe in what we do and attract the right people. There are many who do not prosper in the municipal sector, which can sometimes be very squared, or in the private sector, where in the end it is usually the profit that counts. We are something else, more in line with the number of teachers or school leaders who want to work, he says.

He believes Rescue Mission has resources in the form of volunteers who can participate in the evenings and on the weekends.

– The objective is that the place is open from early in the morning until late at night. After school, there should be leisure activities, students should be able to go directly to the scouts, for example, play an instrument or take a programming course organized by Chalmers, he says.

The rescue mission has carried out, among other things, study visits to London, where there has long been an agreement with non-profit organizations that run combat schools.

But there are also in Sweden examples of independent schools trying to reverse the trend in various ways in poorer resource areas. In Fisksätra, the Viktor Rydberg Foundation will open a new primary school this fall with a modified admissions system, a hybrid of the proximity principle and the queuing system, to try to create a more mixed school environment.

In January this year, the Roya Foundation submitted an application to open a school in Norrby in Borås. Amir Sajadi, CEO of Järvaskolan in Stockholm, enters the project with what he sees as the conclusion that it is possible to turn school outcomes into a vulnerable area.

At 26, he founded Hjärna Hjärta Cash, a company that invests in projects and companies that benefit society in weaker socio-economic areas. But after a few years, he realized that one-off efforts alone would have no lasting positive effect.

– I sat for a long time thinking about how we could really change. Then I came to two things. One is that school is the key to solving many of our challenges. The second is that we must own the school and decide on the daily process.

No sooner said than done. After several years of preparation, Järvaskolan was able to open its doors in 2016.

The thesis behind the initiative It was simple: there can be no fault with children, so the fault must be in the school system. Now they would try to prove it.

The student base would reflect Järva, that is: the school would have roughly the same distribution of students with foreign-born parents and parents with no academic background as in the rest of the area.

When it came to recruiting, anchoring in the area was a great advantage, according to Amir Sajadi. As a result, the school had a staff that speaks 18 languages, which facilitated communication with many parents.

It was also decided early on that students would have great opportunities for extra support with homework. Homework help hours were included in the schedule and additional classes were also offered during nights, weekends, and holidays.

– We did a lot of different things. But the most important thing was that we did everything necessary. We tested ourselves and if something didn’t work, we tried something else. It’s basically about believing in real kids and that permeates the entire organization.

Despite entering the project with great confidence, it still amazes him how quickly it was possible to raise the results. Already three years after the start, the proportion of students who passed upper secondary school eligibility, according to statistics from the National Education Agency, was 92 percent, higher than the Stockholm average.

– Confirmed what we think. It is not very complex. If you can get the kids to come to school and attend a lesson, make sure they get a license to study, then most will. It takes a lot of work, but it’s not very complex, he says.

Håkan Wiclander, President of the National Association of Idea-Based Schools, which organizes non-profit schools, is in favor of this type of initiative.

But, according to him, they are still few. Nonprofit associations and foundations account for a very small proportion of applications to start schools. Most of the applications approved last year (23 out of 36) came from applicants who are part of a group, according to statistics from the Swedish School Inspectorate.

The reason, Wiclander believes, is that it is difficult for young players to establish themselves in the school market.

– Today it is required to have a real estate department, finance department and marketing department at the headquarters of the groups to be able to manage the business. It’s an expression of society’s need to control a “commercialized” school, but it affects smaller schools, he says.

He would like to see lower thresholds for idea-driven actors to run schools.

– These initiatives in vulnerable areas, for example, are very courageous investments. They try to do the hardest thing, which neither the public sector nor the for-profit people can try. That should be easier, he says.

Ulla Hamilton, Executive Director of the Industry Association The National Association of Independent Schools is also positive about this type of initiative. But he disagrees with commercial players avoiding vulnerable areas.

– It is a myth. For-profit schools want to establish themselves in exclusionary areas. Even those who are not there geographically can often have a good mix of students. But it’s good that more people want to open schools in these areas, regardless of whether it’s for-profit or idea-driven actors behind, he says.

To Amir Sajadi in Järvaskolan it doesn’t matter who is behind the schools in socio-economically vulnerable areas. He wants the school leaders there to rethink their leadership and their strategies.

He himself grew up in Hässleholmen, today classified as a particularly vulnerable area in Borås, where the choice was between a nearby school with a bad reputation and a school in the center.

– I was like these kids. I had to walk to school for 40 minutes every morning. So I know how important it is to have a good school close to home. We don’t want to be a school group with 50 schools, but we may need to start multiple schools to show that it works.

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