The Conservatives’ vision for a parent-led free school movement has died away less than a decade after it was launched, figures obtained by Tes reveal.
They show that the number of new free schools opened by parents or community groups has been in decline for each of the last six years with none at all opening in 2017/18.
Figures from the New Schools Network show that while 61 such schools have opened since 2011 in recent years the numbers have tailed off. There were 17 opened in 2012/13. In contrast, there were just four in 2016/17 and none this year, according to the NSN data.
More than 40 free schools did open this year but they are being run by Mats or existing schools.
Critics and opponents of the free school movement say these figures show a change in attitude from the government towards what was once a flagship policy of the Big Society championed by the incoming coalition government in 2010.
Journalist and author Toby Young, who has been at the forefront of the movement since opening the West London Free School as a parent in the first wave, said the DfE had become more cautious about who was allowed to open new schools.
“I think the DfE has become progressively more risk averse since the policy was introduced in 2010 and that has meant fewer parent-led schools,” he said.
“The DfE’s attitude is ‘better the devil you know’, which means plain vanilla free schools set up by large academy chains. That’s short-sighted because it’s only by allowing some innovation that we’ll find out what works best.
“It’s a great shame there aren’t more parent-led free schools. In my experience, parents are better judges of what constitutes a good education than politicians or bureaucrats.”
However, the Department for Education has said that it still welcomes applications from parent groups.
And Mark Lehain, the interim director of the NSN, insists that parents are still integral to the free school movement even if they are not involved in the “nitty- gritty” of writing bids.
Critics of the policy suggest high profile free school closures in the early years of the programme had made the department turn to Mats to open free schools.
Dr Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the National Education Union said: “Michael Gove hailed the free school programme as part of a ‘schools revolution’ - claiming parents and teachers would be rushing to set up and run new schools the length and breadth of the county. In reality, there have been just a handful of genuinely ‘parent-led’ free schools since most parents are perfectly happy with their local school.
“Most free schools are now established and run by academy trusts but this is not a solution to the problems that we saw in many of the early free schools. As we know many multi academy trusts have themselves got into serious difficulty.”
A Department for Education spokesman said: “We welcome all those with an interest to apply to set up free schools, including parent groups, and rigorously assess all applications against published criteria.
“We are especially interested in applications for new free schools that will bring innovation to the wider education system. We will invite a new wave of mainstream free school applications shortly, with a focus on enabling more challenging areas to feel the full benefit of the programme.”
Mr Lehain insisted parents will always be vital to setting up a new free school.
“He said in many areas, as I saw with my own experience setting up Bedford Free School, the initial drive to set up the school will come from local parents. Even if they’re not directly working on the application, they’ll be the ones drumming up support and making the local case for the school.”
To read the full investigation into parent-led free schools, see the 4 May edition of Tes. Subscribers can read the full article here. This week’s Tes magazine is available in all good newsagents. To download the digital edition, Android users can click here and iOS users can click here.
