Free schools: a decade on

A decade ago the first free schools opened with fanfare, and a promise to transform England’s education system.. but it hasn’t quite turned out that way

CREDIT: This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared on The Guardian

It has now been 10 years since the first 24 free schools opened their doors in 2011, but the record of this contentious flagship policy, designed to encourage new school providers, innovation and more parental choice, is less clear.

By December 2020 there were 557 free schools, out of a total of 24,000 schools, with a further 229 in the pipeline. The average cost is thought to have risen way above the £3m for each school promised by Michael Gove; several have cost more than £30m and the most pricey, the Harris Westminster sixth form, reportedly cost almost £50m to set up.

Scores of free schools have either closed or been ‘rebrokered’ to new academy chains, while others have been dogged by claims of poor planning and inadequate buildings. For every success story there have been spectacular failures – such as the Al-Madinah free school in Derby, which closed two years after it opened, or the Bradford Kings Science Academy, whose founder was convicted of defrauding the government.

One of the most arresting features of the programme – the idea that parents or teachers could set up their own schools – has all but fizzled out. In spite of high-profile early examples, such as the free schools opened by the commentator Toby Young, and teachers such as Katharine Birbalsingh, whose Michaela community school was set up in 2014, the number, overall, has dwindled.

According to National Foundation for Education Research, by 2018, the vast majority of free schools were set up by multi-academy trusts, existing schools or faith groups; only about a third of free schools were ‘innovator’ schools, with a novel approach to the curriculum or ethos. NFER concluded that ‘in reality, the free school programme has been a vehicle by which new schools are opened by academy chains’.

Moreover, free schools, which have more autonomy and flexibility than maintained schools, are barely mentioned by ministers these days – so much so that Unity Howard, director of the New Schools Network, a charity set up to support free schools, went public with her disappointment that the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, overlooked the programme in his recent spending review.

One reason for this may be that the consequences of opening new schools in areas where they were not needed is still being felt. In one corner of Suffolk, the abolition of middle schools meant a number of sites became available for free school bids, even though the area already had enough school places.

A mixed record

Jeremy Rowe, an academy chain CEO who was a secondary school head at the time, thinks the impact of the new free schools in Suffolk is still being felt today. “I have no problem with new schools if they meet a need for new places, but there was no need for extra capacity at that time,” he says. “The market is very inelastic in rural areas like ours. Pupils aren’t mobile like they are in the cities so, if new schools are opened but aren’t needed, you are definitely going to affect another school.”

And the record on school standards is mixed. According to the New Schools Network free schools are more likely to be rated ‘outstanding’ than other types of school and, when the early free schools GCSE results were published in 2017, Toby Young, who founded the West London free school, proclaimed that free schools were “the most successful education policy of the post war period”.

However, the Education Policy Institute (EPI), which has been tracking attainment and progress in free schools since 2017, suggests a more nuanced picture, one in which primary free schools perform below the national average, but secondary free schools perform above.

Moreover, EPI found that, when free schools were established in deprived areas, these were in places where pupils were already performing well, rather than in ’challenged white communities’, where educational outcomes are lower. Even when free schools were in poorer areas, they did not always admit the most disadvantaged pupils; on average, they have fewer children eligible for free school meals than their local communities.

The budget for free schools has been tightened in recent years, with an emphasis on the need for more places, but the education secretary, Gavin Williamson, is reported to want to ‘re-energise’ the programme. Unity Howard, of the New Schools Network, believes the next phase should tie in with the government’s ‘levelling up’ agenda.

“There is strong evidence of free school success in urban areas, but that hasn’t been spread evenly across the country,” she says. “We would like to see free schools as part of a wider strategy to improve education in areas with entrenched underperformance.”

But even this sort of transformation is not a given. Tom Richmond, a former DfE adviser who is now director of the education thinktank EDSK, says there is little hard evidence to conclude that free schools have improved the overall performance of the education system, in spite of substantial political and financial investment.

“If free schools are created for the right reasons, in the right places, they still have the potential to tackle underperformance in the most deprived parts of the country, and improve the quality of provision for many vulnerable pupils,” he says.

“However, if the free schools programme does not reach the families and areas that need it the most, a considerable amount of money will be spent with little to show for it.”