With a few collegues I've been working over two years with finding funding for the Kaospilots here in Stockholm. We've been fairly successful with establishing cooperation with the business sector. But the main problem has been to get access to state funds. Our goal is that roughly 1/3 of funds should come from the state education fund system. So far we gave drawn blank and have been fighting the worst kind of bureaucracy you can imagine. Thus the school, which has been in operation for a year, had to suspend operations just before christmas. Students are not that happy.
Today, two of my collegues had a meeting at the government agency that has handled our application. It turns out that the main reason for not granting our application is that we never provided a list of teachers. I'm quite sure the application form requires us to give that information. Only problem is that the school doesn't have any teachers… It is a networked concept where a minimal core staff gives coaching to the students and for all other need hires freelancers. So we probably left that part blank.
But, nobody at the agency reacted and informed us that they needed that information. Instead they just turned our application down. They said that they were very provoked by us not providing the teacher information. Apparently (my interpretation) they can't concieve a school without teachers… How interesting!
And it is not that you just can enter quickly with a new application. You need to apply 18 MONTHS before you actually need the funds.
Hellooo… Anybody else think there is room for new work methods and attitudes in the state education system…?
//jan