What if you cannot fix a school? If that school is so dysfunctional that one after another intervention has failed to "turn around" learners' performance?WHAT if you cannot fix a school? If that school is so dysfunctional that one after another intervention has failed to "turn around" learners' performance?If the unionised teachers remain defiant of any attempts from the department of education - the employer - to get them to show up and teach every day with passion and commitment to the children?If the parents have long given up and leave their children stuck there simply because they have no other options?If the culture of the school is so decrepit that there are no signs of social, cultural, sporting or academic life, only slow-moving teachers who do not want to be there and uninspired children who spent most of the school day waiting for something to happen?As an incurable optimist with an emphatically affirmative response to George Count's famous question - can schools change the social order? - I have had to make peace with this simple fact: sometimes a school falls into such levels of organisational meltdown that trying to change that school is a waste of energy.Every now and again my Schools Turnaround team has to walk away from a school because the politics and bureaucracy that entraps educational work make it impossible to secure change, despite the availability of resources and expertise.Under such circumstances a new model is needed, for with each passing year another generation of mostly poor, black South African youth is cast aside such that the rest of their lives are marked by educational failure and chronic unemployment.Which is why I am intrigued by a new model of schooling proposed by the department of education in the Western Cape. It is called Collaboration Schools and is modelled on the very successful Academy Schools in the UK.It is, in essence, a public-private partnership in which the government retains overall responsibility for the school but its operations are conducted by a range of private-sector companies, donors and nongovernmental organisations, alongside, of course, parents and teachers.In this model schools obtain vital resources for their transformation; they gain access to professional assistance to assist teachers and principals; and they benefit from a genuine partnership of internal and external skills to change the organisation.It remains a public school and the government does not give up its responsibility. But some critical things change. The school is held accountable for results and teachers are selected on the basis of competence and commitment, nothing else.Public education is in my DNA. Both my children attended public schools by parental choice and I love the idea of democratic education in the public space. But I would be irresponsible not to recognise that when your so-called government schools fail children day after day , you consider other models alongside the traditional public school.This model can work for one principal reason - the choice of teacher is no longer based on jobs-for-cash, union loyalties, tribal affinity or political connections.For this reason alone expect resistance from the teacher unions.It's the people, stupid! This is a play of course on a very effective phrase Bill Clinton's campaign used when he ran for American president, It's the economy, stupid. But schools, like any organisation, stand or fall by the professionalism, competence and dedication of the people who do the work. In this context, those people are the teachers and principals. It is not primarily the textbooks, or the buildings, or the funds available in the budget - important as these elements are in the operations of a school.More than anything else, however, highly competent educators matter when it comes to learning gains for individual children.What the Collaboration Schools model does, in effect, is place that vital resource, the teacher, beyond the reach of unscrupulous operators. Put bluntly, change the teacher and you change the school.What the private sector does better than its public equivalent, of course, is to demand accountability for investments made and this is one of the strongest benefits of collaboration.A competent and committed teacher has nothing to fear; what makes the unions jittery is that they know that the net effect of their rule over the poorest schools is to sustain a regime of non-accountability.That is why South Africans must support the Collaboration Schools initiative. It might be our one last chance of giving our most neglected youth in the most dysfunctional schools a clear shot out of poverty...