The case for free schools

July 2017

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The case for free schools

The Headlines Free schools are more likely to be rated Outstanding. To date, 30% of free schools inspected by Ofsted have been rated Outstanding compared to a national average of 21% and just 19% of council-run schools.

Free schools are popular. In 2016, secondary free schools attracted an average of 3.6 applicants per place, compared to an average of 2.4 applicants per place for local authority schools.

On progress and attainment, are above average. If you rate them according to progress and attainment, the majority of free schools are well above average. In the free school sixth forms that posted A-level results last year, 27.8% of pupils got A*/A/B or better, compared to a national average of 19.9%.

Free schools help the most disadvantaged. There are three times as many free schools in England’s most deprived areas as there are in the least deprived. Secondary free schools educate an above average number of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds (FSM6).

The Trail-Blazers King’s College Mathematics School. This specialist sixth form, which opened in Kennington in 2014, was one of the five highest-performing state schools in the country last year, with 94.5% of students getting A*/A/B or better at A-level and 23% receiving offers from Oxford or Cambridge. It was rated Outstanding in 2017 and last week it topped the league table for sixth forms specialising in STEM subjects, according to the Independent.

ARK Conway Primary . This 4-11 school, which opened in Acton in 2011, got the best Key Stage 1 results in England in 2014 and 2015, outperforming England’s 15,000 state primaries as well as private schools like the £5,000-a-term James Allens’ Girls’ School in Dulwich. It was rated Outstanding in 2013. (ARK is an academy chain that has set up five free schools and has six in pre- opening.)

Tauheedul Islam Boys’ High School. This 11-18 school, which opened in Blackburn in 2012, got the third-best Progress 8 score in the country last year. Its Attainment 8 score was 61.8 points, compared to a national average of 48.5 points, and 95% of the pupils achieved a C or better in their English and maths GCSEs, compared to a national average of 59.3%. In addition, 73% of the pupils achieved the English Baccalaureate, compared to a national average of 23.1%. It was rated Outstanding in 2014. (Tauheedul Education Trust is an academy chain that has set up 11 free schools and has five in pre-opening.)

London Academy of Excellence. This East London sixth form, which was set up by a consortium of independent schools in 2012, was ranked Sixth Form of the Year by The Sunday Times in 2016. Last year, 50% of its students got A*/A at A level, with 86% getting A*-B. This year, 20 of its students received offers from Oxford and Cambridge. It was rated Good in 2014. (A second London Academy of Excellence sixth form is due to open in Tottenham in September, 2017.)

Holyport College. This 11-18 school, sponsored by Eton College and which opened in 2014, is one of only two free schools to offer boarding places, the other being Exeter Mathematics School. It sets aside some of its boarding places each year for looked after children. It was rated Outstanding in 2017.

University of Cambridge Primary School. This school, which was set up by Cambridge in 2015, is the first University Training School for primary in the UK.

Harmonize Academy. This alternative provision school for 13-16-year-olds who have been excluded, or are at risk of exclusion, was opened in 2012 and has received cross party support. Andy Burnham, the local MP, said, “This school is a real model that could be replicated elsewhere giving alternative provision to young people who for whatever reason haven’t flourished in mainstream education.” It was rated Outstanding in 2015.

Derby Pride Academy. This alternative provision school for 11-to-16-year-olds who have been excluded, or are at risk of exclusion, was set up in partnership with Derby Football Club. It was rated Outstanding in 2014.

Churchill Special Free School. This school, for children with speech, language and communication needs, as well as children on the autistic spectrum, was opened in 2013 by Samuel Ward Academy Trust, a large chain based in the East of England. It was rated Outstanding in 2015.

The Numbers We urgently need new school places. According to the ‘Schools That Work for Everyone’ Green Paper (September, 2016), the primary school population is set to increase by 174,000 between 2016 and 2020 and the secondary population by 284,000. We need more alternative provision and special schools. Between now and 2023, we will need an additional 14,000 places in special schools and 2,000 places in alternative provision schools. Free schools are helping to meet this need. The 131 new free schools announced in Wave 12 (April, 2017) will create 69,000 places when full. This brings the total number of free schools open or approved to open to over 700. When full, these schools will provide an additional 400,000 places. (The 131 included several special and alternative provision schools.) Free schools are being built where there is a demographic need for additional places. The estimates that more than 80% of the free schools opened or approved to open since 2013 are in areas where there’s a demographic need for more places. Ninety-three per

cent of the new places that will be created by the Wave 12 schools are in areas where there is a demographic need. Free schools are a cost effective way of meeting the need for more places. The recent National Audit Office report on schools capital (February, 2017) found that on a like-for-like basis, free schools cost 29% less per square metre than schools built under Labour’s Building Schools for the Future programme. The Government’s new property company, LocatED, will reduce these costs further by taking a more efficient approach to land acquisition. Free schools increase parental choice and improve standards. While a small minority of places in free schools are not justified by demographic need, without surplus capacity parents would not have any choice about where to send their children and free schools are only allowed to create surplus places where existing schools are not good enough. As the recent National Audit Office report said, “Some spare capacity is needed to allow parents to exercise choice.” Building new free schools is a better way of meeting the demand for new places than expanding failing local authority schools. In the 2015-16 academic year, more than 7,500 primary school places were created in schools rated Requires Improvement or Inadequate by Ofsted, while 3,678 secondary school places were created in equivalent schools. Over the five-year period before that, 71,000 school places were created in failing primary schools, with an additional 42,000 in failing secondary schools. It is a better use of schools capital to create new free schools, which are popular with parents, more likely to be Outstanding and get better results than other schools. Expanding Good or Outstanding local authority schools to meet the demand is not an option. Since 2009, 444,337 additional new places have been created in schools that are Good or Outstanding and there is little or no room for them to take any more. Forcing these schools to expand by such a large amount has created enormous pressure, making it difficult for them to maintain standards. For instance, Acton High School was rated Good in 2013 and since then has been forced by Ealing Council to take in an additional 200 pupils. In its most recent Ofsted inspection earlier this year it was rated Inadequate. In the past year, over 50 schools have seen their Ofsted ratings fall from Good or Outstanding to Inadequate as they have been forced to accommodate more pupils. The local authorities with greatest need are often poor performers. If you look at the table below showing those local authorities with the highest need for new school places in primary and secondary by 2020, you can see that some of them are among the worst performers in the country when it comes to education. (The third column shows their ranking in the Education Policy Institute’s 2016 survey of academy chains and local authorities, where each was ranked out of 218, with one being the best.) It is not a good idea to rely on these local authorities to meet the demand for new places by expanding their existing schools, or an efficient use of capital funding. It would be better to allow community groups and academy chains to meet this need by setting up new free schools.

Local Authority ranking in the Local Authority ranking in the Predicted Local Authority EPI 2016 performance table- EPI 2016 performance table (Key Need by 2020 Key Stage 2 Stage 4)

Manchester 12435 50 81

Birmingham 9488 154 104

Leicester 6892 131 136

Leeds 5477 73 85

Redbridge 3942 17 45

West Sussex 3421 196 34

Oldham 3356 73 171

Newham 2934 5 19

Greenwich 2804 5 52

Peterborough 2725 179 10

Sutton 2509 50 12

North Somerset 2432 95 N/A

Central Bedfordshire 2305 207 N/A

Havering 2211 50 109

Bromley 1743 17 N/A

Wolverhampton 1623 50 169

Barking and Dagenham 1309 50 50

Sandwell 1257 73 123

Derby 1190 131 152

Slough 1118 95 68

Trafford 1091 50 118

Luton 1036 196 76

Barnet 820 31 2

Bolton 732 50 74

Telford and Wrekin 684 50 40

Torbay 668 73 N/A

Harrow 604 31 N/A

Solihull 594 179 153

Newcastle upon Tyne 545 31 167

Islington 448 17 42

The presumption route is not an attractive alternative. One solution would be to meet a significant percentage of this basic need via the presumption route, whereby a local authority announces it needs a new school, holds a competition to appoint a provider, appoints the provider (in partnership with the Regional Schools Commissioner), then oversees the construction of the new school using targeted basic need funding. The attractive thing about this route, according to its proponents, is that the capital cost of building the new presumption school on a per place basis is lower than the cost of building a new free school because the local authority can build on land it already owns. However, there are three difficulties with this:

― Presumption competitions do not attract many bidders because of the suspicion, usually well-founded, that the local authority has a preferred provider in mind from the outset and the ‘competition’ is a box-ticking exercise rather than a genuine contest. The preferred bidder is often one of the local authority’s own schools that has recently set up a multi- academy trust. The involvement of the local Regional Schools Commissioner does not usually solve this problem because of the reluctance of good, external providers to submit bids.

― Presumption competitions are always for ‘plain vanilla’ schools, whether primaries or secondaries, thereby ruling out genuinely innovative proposals. For instance, there has never been a presumption competition for an all-through, two-form entry school, even though one of the highest-performing state schools in England in 2016 was King Solomon Academy, an all-through, two-form entry academy in Paddington that was set up by Ark in 2009. Nor has there been a presumption competition that would have allowed for any of the innovative models that have emerged out of the free schools programme, such as specialist sixth forms.

― Presumption schools are not always cheaper to build than free schools. The recent National Audit Office report on schools capital noted that presumption costs varied significantly between local authorities, with the cost of a primary place ranging from £6,200 to £13,300. The report thought this might be because local authorities are not choosing to create new school places in the most cost-effective ways or are not implementing their chosen approaches efficiently. The NOA found that in 2014 the new free schools built by the DfE were 16% cheaper than projects led by local authorities, thanks to the Department’s ability to group several projects together when putting them out to tender.

Innovative, Cost-Effective Ways of Opening Free Schools Allow free schools to open on the sites of existing schools. The most cost-effective way of setting up a new free school is to allow it to open on the site of an existing school. This is a common way of setting up charter schools in America. For instance, In New York City so many charter schools have been allowed to open like this that 300,000 of the city’s students attended school in a building hosting more than one school in 2013. There are two main forms this might take:

― Rather than expand local authority schools that have been rated Requires Improvement or Inadequate in areas with a demographic need for new places, allow free schools to be set up on the sites of those schools instead. In America this has sometimes led to tension between the two schools, which are effectively in competition, but it has also led to collaboration, with an exchange of best practice. See here, for instance.

― In areas where there is not a demographic need for new places and even some surplus places, allow free schools to set up smaller schools on the sites of failing schools and gradually close the failing schools as the new free schools grow.

― A third alternative is to close the failing school and, after a one-year interregnum, open a new free school on the site. This is happening in Folkestone. Turner Schools, a multi- academy trust, is due to open a new free school on the site of Pent Valley in 2018, a failing school that is set to close later this year. Pent Valley is currently a sixth-form entry school and the new school will be four-form entry. (To avoid the need for an inefficient one-year interregnum, the Government could change the TUPE regulations.)

Exemplar Free Schools Comprehensive Grammars. Of the eight secondary free schools that got positive Progress 8 scores in 2016, six can be described as ‘Comprehensive Grammars’: the Tauheedul Islam Boys’ High School, Bedford Free School, the , Dixons Kings Academy, Bradford Girls’ Grammar School and IES Breckland. These are schools that combine grammar school standards when it comes to curriculum and behaviour, i.e. extremely high expectations in both areas, with a comprehensive intake. These schools are also in some of the most deprived parts of England, including three in opportunity areas. Four of them are in growing academy chains.

Highest-performing academy chains. The same educational philosophy, which has been described as ‘neo-traditionalist’, pervades the highest-performing academy chains, as ranked by the Sutton Trust. This year, the highest-ranked chains when it comes to the progress and attainment of disadvantaged students are City of London Corporation, Harris Federation, Outwood Grange Academy Trust, Ark Schools, the Mercers Company, Aspirations Academy Trust, Landau Forte Charitable Trust, United Learning and the Priory Federation of Academies Trust. All of these chains, most of which contain free schools, operate ‘Comprehensive Grammars’. (Chain Effects 2017: The impact of academy chains on low-income students, Merryn Hutchings and Becky Francis.)

No Excuses urban charter schools. A similar approach characterises ‘No Excuses’ urban charter schools, which have been identified by numerous research studies as the most successful high schools in America when it comes to raising the attainment of disadvantaged students. This phrase was first used by Abigail and Stephen Thernstrom in a book called No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning (2001). ‘No Excuses’ schools typically have the following characteristics: uniforms, effective behaviour management systems, high expectations, longer school days, shorter holidays, younger-than-average teachers, regular lesson observations, teacher feedback and an emphasis on the traditional teaching of English and maths. In nearly all these respects, they are identical to ‘Comprehensive Grammars’. These schools increase the test scores of pupils from low income families when it comes to English and maths by a third of a standard deviation a year, which is sufficient to eliminate the attainment gap between disadvantaged students and their peers after a few years.

Lessons learned. There is now so much academic research attesting to the effectiveness of ‘No Excuses’ schools, much of it bearing the imprimatur of America’s top universities, that educators in the mainstream public education system have begun to implement some of the strategies that have proved so successful in the charter sector. For instance, a group of educators in Houston managed to turn around some low-performing public schools by encouraging them to adopt ‘No Excuses’ practises.

Social mobility. Thanks to the success of free schools, academies and charter schools based on the ‘Comprehensive Grammar’/’No Excuses’ model, we now know what educational approach works best when it comes to raising the attainment of the most disadvantaged students. If the Department for Education wants to boost social mobility in the most deprived parts of England, including opportunity areas, it should allow Outstanding existing schools, visionary headteachers, community groups and high-performing academy chains to set up free schools in these areas.

New Schools Network New Schools Network (NSN) is a charity set up in 2009 that has worked with 70% of the free schools that have opened or been approved to open so far. The following is a list of some of the groups that NSN is helping to prepare applications for the next round of free school applications. These are the schools that won’t see the light of day if the programme is scrapped: ― Specialist maths schools. We have identified several universities interested in setting up specialist maths schools.

― North Halifax Free School. North Halifax Grammar School is developing a bid for a ‘Comprehensive Grammar’, i.e. a non-selective, ‘No Excuses’ school, that seeks to address both a demographic need for new places as well as an educational need for a new, high- performing school. It aims to replicate the ethos of the neighbouring grammar school, sharing staff and facilities.

― The Telford Free School. Founded by the high performing Thomas Telford academy chain, this will be a 4-18 school in Telford and Wrekin, an opportunity area. In 2016, Thomas Telford School was one of the highest-performing comprehensives in the country, with 63% of children achieving the English Baccalaureate.

― Blue Coat II. The Outstanding Blue Coat CofE School is the highest performing secondary school in Oldham and has been providing education to children in the borough since 1834. It has a P8 score of 0.34 in a local authority where the Progress 8 average is -0.33. The trust is aiming to replicate this success at Blue Coat II in an opportunity area with a significant demographic need for new places.

― The Halle Free School. The City Learning Trust is working with The Halle Orchestra to develop a free school in Stoke-on-Trent, an opportunity area. The Halle Free School will put music at the centre of its vision, drawing on the expertise of the orchestra’s professional musicians and staff.

― London Academy of Excellence 3. A consortium of independent schools has approached NSN asking for help to set up a third London Academy of Excellence in a deprived part of North-West London.

― National College of Cyber Security. This will be a sixth form specialising in cyber security. It is being proposed by the Qufaro group, a not-for-profit organisation made of up of representatives from Raytheon, BT Security, the Institute of Information Security Professionals and the National Museum of Computing.

― BOA Technical. Building on the success of Birmingham Ormiston Academy (BOA), BOA Technical will be a school for 16-19-year-olds that specialises in the technical and production side of theatre, film, TV, video, online and new platforms. ― QPR Alternative Provision School. Based on the Derby Pride model, this school will be for 11-to-16-year-olds who have been excluded, or are at risk of exclusion, and set up by QPR Football Club.

― Saints Free School. This will be an alternative provision school for 11-18-year-olds who have been excluded, or are at risk of exclusion, set up by the Saints Rugby Club in St Helen’s in partnership with Cowley International College.

― Willow Brook School. A successful special school in Greenwich called Willow Dene wants to create a second school for children on the autistic spectrum. It will be part of the Compass Partnership, a newly formed academy chain in Greenwich that comprises both mainstream and special schools.

― Action for Kids College. This will be a special school in Haringey set up by the children’s charity Action for Kids. It will offer 99 places to students aged between 16 and 19 who have Education, Health and Care Plans with cognition and learning (MLD and SLD) and communication and interaction (ASD and SLCN) identifie