Plus: Mark Rice-Oxley on why we should embrace the four-day working week

Shaunagh Roberts and Jayshree Tailor never considered themselves campaigners. But when the education watchdog, Ofsted, said their children’s school was failing and would be taken over by an academy trust they had never heard of, they started asking questions. Now the campaign to keep Waltham Holy Cross school under local authority control is growing and parents are hopeful they can halt the forced outsourcing of the school to a private contractor. 

Aditya Chakrabortty has been following the campaign for months and tells Anushka Asthana he is astounded by the resourcefulness of the campaigners, working from from their kitchens with little more than cracked phones and broken laptops. 

Also today, in opinion: don’t like Mondays? Mark Rice-Oxley makes the case for the four-day working week.
 

The Guardian is editorially independent. And we want to keep our journalism open and accessible to all. But we increasingly need our readers to fund our work.