Fiona Millar: Why ‘free schools’ will cost our children and society dear

IT has been fascinating to follow the controversy over the emerging free schools in the North of England. As a parent, governor and campaigner in London, it is easy to get lulled into thinking that rows over projects like writer and journalist Toby Young’s proposed “comprehensive grammar school”, complete with compulsory Latin, are essentially metropolitan affairs.

But the reality is that free schools, independent state schools that can be set up by parents, teachers and charities, with freedoms that other schools don’t have and outside the local authority network, are dividing communities all over the country, as the coverage of the Rainbow Free School in Bradford demonstrates.

Why is that? At the Local Schools Network, a web-based campaign which I and others have set up to celebrate and promote the interests of existing local schools, the reasons for that are becoming clear.

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Firstly free schools are going to be very expensive. Most will be small and per pupil costs high as they will lack economies of scale. According to my colleague, Francis Gilbert, who has looked at the funding implications, using existing government information, some of these early projects may cost up to £7,000 per pupil more than existing state schools.

Then there is the cost of building them. The Government’s abolition of the Building Schools for the Future programme has left hundreds of schools, my own daughter’s included, without the state-of-the-art new facilities they were expecting. Added to that has come the news that all schools’ annual budgets for minor repairs and refurbishment have been cut by around 70 per cent.

To see some of that money being diverted into free schools, which may not even be needed, is galling. According to the BBC earlier this week, the Government has bought a £15m site for one school so, with renovation costs, the sums involved may even be more than many of those in the much maligned BSF programme.

Moreover, in areas where there are already enough school places and where the new school uses its freedoms on admissions to cream off the more able and motivated pupils, this will inevitably lead to other schools losing pupils and revenue and having to manage increasingly skewed intakes, possibly facing closure.

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One example of how covert selection can be used by free schools is the Bolingbroke Academy in south London. Dubbed the “bankers’ free School” by the media, it is being promoted by a group of affluent parents and has already decided that its admissions will be based on four primary schools, which have markedly lower children on free school meal figures and from some minority ethnic backgrounds, than the local borough average.

Finally, there are the implications for community cohesion. Just last week, David Cameron made a speech in which he claimed he didn’t want “different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and the mainstream”. Yet, when it comes to schools, his Ministers are encouraging quite the opposite.

The free schools policy will almost certainly lead to an increase in the number of single faith schools, often promoted by parents from the sort of minority ethnic communities that Mr Cameron wants to integrate into the British way of life.

Of the first eight free schools now certain to go ahead, one is a Jewish school, one a Hindu school and one a Church of England School. There are several more Jewish and Anglican projects in the pipeline, and Islamic and Sikh groups have also expressed an interest in free schools. Maybe it is not surprising that the Creationists are now getting in on the act and want their own school in Nottinghamshire.

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Meanwhile the new national curriculum, through which the Government wants to teach a sense of “national identity”, will not apply to free schools.

At the Local Schools Network, we believe there is another approach. New school places should be created where they are needed, but they should be maintained schools that are part of the local authority network with the same rules on admissions, exclusions and the curriculum.

If they are not needed, then public money should go instead on supporting existing schools, investing in their fabric and teaching and encouraging them to collaborate with others, not compete for either resources or pupils.

Schools can bring communities together, rather than divide them. There is nothing more powerful than the sight of children from all backgrounds, faiths and cultures walking through the same school gate every morning.

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We have been lucky enough to have that for our own children, in state schools that deliver an excellent standard of education. We believe it can be achieved in communities across the country if different policies are pursued.

Please join us, tell us about your local school, hear from other parents about some great local schools and also learn about what is going on in their part of the country.

Polls consistently suggest that the majority of parents are happy with their local schools, but we need to make our views heard loud and clear, especially while the current Education Bill is passing through Parliament.