Discussion: benchmarking, autonomy and educational purposes
It is likely, given the paucity of research and documentation in this area, that many schools seeking
to become co-operative schools at the present time will do so with little in-depth knowledge of the
history or current practice of co-operative education. This is not unique to co-operative schools;
indeed, many schools seek academy partners and sponsors with little understanding of their values
(Wilson & Mills, 2008). We can conjecture, however, that many schools turn to the co-operative, as
Sutherland college did above, with a broad conception that co-operative education represented a
set of values to which they could sign up as a school but without a detailed plan for realising such
values in practice. Becoming a co-operative school, at a time when so many schools are being
encouraged or forced to become academies in the face of rapid budget cuts, might be seen by many
as the least worst option in the current climate and the practical realities of what co-operative
education might mean in practice may be left to be worked out later. Such a rapid growth in
institutions, however, brings with it risks of incoherence and dilution of co-operative education
practice as local teachers, communities and schools interpret the values according to their own local
preferences. It also brings with it the risk that the co-operative discourse will simply be colonised
within and domesticated by the existing dominant discourses of standards and competitive
inspection in schools.