The claim
“Half of the 24 schools are located in the most deprived 30 per cent of communities in the country”
Conservative Party press release, 5 September 2011
The background
Nick Clegg went to great pains today to stress that the 24 Free Schools due to open this month must not be the “preserve of the privileged few”.
Trotting out figures from the Local Government’s rather unwieldy “deprivation index“, the Conservatives claimed that half of them will open in the 30 per cent worst off areas in England.
Are they right? FactCheck pulls out its red pen.
The analysis
Drilling down into England’s deprivation index we found that 11 of the schools are in the most deprived 30 per cent of the country (see graphic below).
FactCheck concedes that 11 is almost half of 24, so they’re not far off.
However, we found that only three schools are due to open in the poorest 10 per cent of England’s local authorities.
The three; Nishkam Free School, Ark Atwood and Rainbow, are all primary schools that together will offer 330 places in their first year of opening.
Nishkam, one of the seven religious Free Schools opening, is the first publicly funded Sikh “ethos” school in the Midlands.
FactCheck also discovered that nine of the 24 schools are set to open in the top 50 per cent better-off areas in England.
What’s more, five of them are existing independent schools applying for state funding under the Free School status. That would suggests many of the children who will benefit from the new schools enjoy fairly comfortable backgrounds.
Meanwhile, two of the independent schools, the specialist arts college Sandbach and the Maharishi primary school, are located in the top 20 per cent of England’s most wealthy areas.
The verdict
Michael Gove’s 24 Free Schools opening this month must be highly commended for their herculean efforts to open within 15 months.
But just less than half of them are opening in England’s 30 per cent most deprived areas. Seven are religious schools, five are existing independent schools and two are located in England’s richest counties.
It is clear the policy isn’t worthy of an A* this year.
Mr Gove is due to give the green light to the second wave of Free Schools for 2012 later this month. The Department for Education has received 281 applications, and today Nick Clegg said he wants to see all of those approved opening in poorer neighbourhoods.
FactCheck will keep its beady eyes open and report back on Year 2.
By Emma Thelwell
As well as where the schools are physically located, it would be worth examining their intake (if possible) – are the ones in deprived areas taking children from the local estates, or are they taking advantage of the lower rents / higher building availability but will take a significant proportion of pupils from neighbouring, more affluent areas?
It may also be worthwhile looking at ‘the competition’ – i.e. other schools in the same area. For example, is the free school surrounded by low-graded schools? If the claim is that there aren’t enough school places in the vicinity of the free school, why not? Local authorities usually take demographics into account when deciding the PAN (planned admission number) for local schools – so is it a case that the local schools can’t expand and opening a new school the conventional way would be a bureaucratic nightmare?
The Government has declared that new schools have to be academies or “free” schools and a secondary school near me has been refused permission by the LA to expand into the top 2 floors of its own building. This is, presumably, to allow the Bolingbroke Academy to claim a shortage of places.
I hope these schools get off to a good start. It doesn’t look like it – the politically correct nutters in the education system still retain an iron grip on their own interests; Michael Gove alluded to it and the teaching unions are enthusiastic collaboraters in the system.
“the politically correct nutters in the education system still retain an iron grip on their own interests”
By that i take it you mean teachers, headmasters and professional educationalists? Few of whom are nutters and most of whom put the interests of the children they teach above any political point scoring.
in a contest about who knows most about what is best for our children, between a right wing idealogical journalist who has no classroom experience or qualifications and the massed ranks of education professionals, i am with the teachers on this!
Cathy/Emma,
CamClegg lied, simple as.
But you are missing the point here. The so-called “free” schools are not meant to reach everybody. And even if they WERE, take it to its logical conclusion and you’d have them all falling over themselves to fight over an ever-shrinking pot of money.
No, the real point is to remove education from local democratic control, as it is with everything else the Tories instigate, including privatisation of the NHS.
Quite rightly, necon Tories see local democratic control as the enemy of their poisonous ultra right policies. Therefore they try to eliminate it where they can.
In the long run of course it will be as disastrously schismatic as the unlamented Thatcher era. You might remember her, the one who said, “There is no such thing as society.” Which is what makes CamClegg’s “Big Society” so funny. But we don’t hear so much of that after the London Riots do we?
The Riots are the social invoice we pay – and will continue to pay – for evil garbage like “free” schools. The longer we tolerate it, the worse it will get.
Free schools are another example of the way the conservative are undermining teachers headmasters and LEAs. Just like the dash towards academics, this is a politically driven move to “decentralise” schools, pretending to be hands off, whilst at the same time constantly changing and dictating policy and controlling the funding.
This policy seems to have been dreamt up over a diner party by the Chipping Norton set. Clearly there are people with influence who think THEY (therefore anyone) can run schools, “cant be that hard, more Chablis Jeremy”?
This promotion of free schooI sends a clear message to the education establishment of this country, Gove thinks that anyone can run a school, anyone can teach and anyone can run education establishments better than the established qualified professionals. This is little more than an ideological gamble with the future of our children. Why would any secretary of state for education, allow schools to open without any statutory requirement for it to have qualified teachers? Just because any fool with out qualifications or experience in education can become secretary of state, doesnt mean we should allow unqualified people into a…
Spot on jd. I have no special respect for teachers – in fact the ones I come into contact with seem pretty evenly split between hard-working and capable and lazy, disinterested and incapable. BUT surely that means we need to tighten up on qualifications (including people skills as well as academic) and I too am completely confused by a Govt Minister allowing schools with unqualified staff. While your last sentence about any fool becoming sec of state made me laugh, this is really serious. Does he not have a duty to ensure that certain standards are adhered to in any state funded educational institution? Allowing anyone to set up and run these schools is undoubtedly failing in that duty.
And as for existing independent schools changing to take the funding what on earth is happening there? Are they then taking a whole new set of pupils? Or are pupils, whose parents previously could afford private education but now mysteriously need to send their kids to a state school, merely remaining in place? Therefore preventing a child who would have gone to a state school anyway having the choice of the free school.
As government money pours into these – 9 of which are in the better off half of the country – many already established schools are being deprived of the cash they need to undertake repairs and improvements.
No doubt the former will succeed while the latter fall even further behind.
Isn’t this what used to be called a self-fulfilling prophesy?
On free schools it was clarified by Nick today that he and Gove agree on the part of the Conservative manifesto which says that “we didn’t need to have to have “for profit” at the moment”. Presumably coming soon then.
Time to get those marching shoes on again. Don’t let them think we have gone to sleep. Get mad but don’t burn things. They hate people in the street – it’s bad press for them because it wakes others up!
Send a poem, song, letter or school dinner to your MP! And keep sending them even if they don’t reply (like mine).
“Free” schools? I think there may be a few strings attached to that concept. Poor Nick. Not a clue still.
Time to get those marching shoes on . . . . . it’s good exercise.
Has a guarantee that free schools won’t become the preserve of the rich or be run for profit been written into law, no [give me strength] we are to depend on NC’s word……
In the interests of checking facts, and as a former Cheshire resident, I feel obliged to point out that the case of Sandbach School is somewhat different in this case. Although an independent school, it has been LEA funded for many many years, so to claim the current pupils are as privileged as those of an average independent school is untrue; rather it is simply the local comprehensive boys’ school.
Aside from this point, good work!
Free schools or faith schools lead to at the least segregation, and polarisation of communities; but also breeds intolerance and allows uncritical mis-treatment of children.
The setting up of NI in twenties was only achieved with RC church getting the right to run its own schools with taxpayer funding, and clergy bullying their flock into attendance, away from the state schools (which only by default became majority protestant).
The results:-
A segregated and polarised community
Unfettered nationalist (call that facist) and racist propaganda, with blame always diverted away from the church
Abusive Christian Brothers who engendered real violence
into their charges – I think they’ve been banned now.
Seriously, don’t let the faith brigade, or the creationists, get a free pass and our taxes, to pollute young minds, and abuse young bodies.
To say Maharishi School is in one of the country’s richest counties may be a fact, but it is also a fact that it is in one of the poorest areas of that county.
The percentage of children qualifying for free school meals in this area is double the national average.
Please factcheck that.