Phantom plan for free school?

It appears to be a phantom school with seemingly no teaching staff in place and no suitable building – even though it should be accepting its first pupils this September and other schools across the town are trying to finalise places for the next academic year.

Yet how can Rotherham, a town with below average academic attainment, plan for the future when its LEA has had no contact with the organisers of a new school that will have a direct bearing on the future of neighbouring schools?

Ignorance offers no defence to Mr Gove or his department, even though this pioneering policy – allied to the academies programme – is beginning to see some schools in challenging social areas prosper after breaking free from local authority control.

After all, this venture was one of Yorkshire schools – and 79 across the country – that were hailed as “pioneers in education” three months ago when the Department for Education outlined the next phase of free schools.

This can be interpreted one of two ways. Either Mr Gove and his team were looking to inflate the figures in order to present a misleading impression about the policy’s popularity – or the Department for Education has been deliberately keeping Rotherham Council in the dark about this proposal.

Either way, it is not a credible way to run an education policy – especially in a community already hit by job losses and a dearth of opportunities for school-leavers. This is an issue that is too important to be left to chance; plans need to be far more robust than a mystery school having the blessing of Barry Elliott, one of television’s Chuckle Brothers, and who also appears in the dark about any plans.

For, while free schools could have merit, they are still part of a local network of schools – a network that needs to be robust, with clear rules on admissions, so that every child can go to the school most suited to their needs. It is a point that Mr Gove needs to address when he provides parents in Rotherham with some answers.