This paper is concerned with the recent growth of the co-operative schools movement (CSM) in education in England. It provides a detailed description of the demography and distribution of co-operative schools and the motivations for becoming a co-operative school. Based on data provided by the Co-operative College (2014) the paper will identify schools' geographical distribution, the particular loadings in terms of primary and secondary institutions, the school populations they served, and the correlation between the political complexions of the local areas within which these schools were located and their decision to follow the co-operative route at that point in time. A key component of our research has been to explore the motivations which encouraged schools to affiliate with the Schools Co-operative Society (SCS) rather than with other forms of trusts and academies. We thus complement the statistical analysis of data with interview data from key figures in the CSM and a consideration of the values base within which the CSM is set.