Free Schools: Educational Standards

Baroness Finn Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2019 Grand Committee

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Nash on calling this debate and I pay tribute to his long-standing contribution to improving educational outcomes for all. He has shown a passionate commitment to free schools, both as an Education Minister and through his work with Future, the multi-academy trust.

Free schools are the single most successful group of state schools. They outperform their competitors by almost every measure. They are driving up educational standards, exposing poor performance, improving access and choice, and pioneering innovation. Most importantly, they are delivering for pupils, especially the most disadvantaged.

Let us look at the evidence. Free schools have created 290,000 new places, in schools that were, on average, 29% cheaper to build than previous school-building programmes. Some 31% of free schools are rated as outstanding by Ofsted, compared with 21% of other schools. As we have heard, they are three times more likely to be located in the most deprived areas of the country than the least deprived. They are more likely to be oversubscribed than any other type of state school. More places at lower cost, higher performing, serving the most deserving and in high demand from parents—so it is strange that the shadow Secretary of State has said that Labour would end the free schools programme because:

“They neither improve standards, nor empower staff or parents”.


On standards, free schools outperform other state schools at key stage 1 and get better A-level and GCSE results. They attract more first-preference choices from parents than other schools, and record numbers of teachers are setting up free schools. So, yes, they improve standards, yes, they empower staff and, yes, they empower parents. To be on the side of free schools is to be on the side of teachers, parents and, most importantly, pupils.

The programme owes much of its success to the bravery, vision and perseverance of the team of my right honourable friend Michael Gove when he became Education Secretary in 2010. Naysayers—and, indeed, some officials—said that ordinary people could not set up schools, only the state could. In fact the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, had already started to highlight and challenge the “cartel” in charge of our schools. My noble friends Lord O’Shaughnessy, Lord Hill and Lord Nash, alongside Michael Gove, truly broke this monopolistic way of thinking and in so doing enabled the hundreds of applicants to come forward and set up their own free schools

Free from uniformity and monopoly, we now have a system rich in choice, diversity and innovation. We have schools being set up in former churches, fire stations and government offices. But more than buildings, we have new approaches. Parents, teachers and businesses are putting forward many valid philosophies about how to educate our children. At the same time, they are also delivering for the most deprived children.

Take the London Academy of Excellence, the core purpose of which is to provide social mobility through education. It was set up by Brighton College after it learned that children in the local area—one of the most deprived in the UK—had nowhere to go for sixth form, and more than two-thirds of the students are from families who have never sent a child to university. Since 2014, more than 1,000 LAE students have gone on to study degree courses, the majority at Russell group universities. Not only has the LAE played a leading role in raising standards in one of the poorest parts of the capital, it has set a new benchmark for others to emulate.

Take the maths schools, King’s College London Mathematics School and Exeter Mathematics School. These schools attract disadvantaged students who typically do not pursue a maths path, and send 100% and 98% respectively of their leavers on to STEM courses at university. King’s Maths School topped the Department for Education A-levels table last year. With Liverpool opening and Durham now confirmed, it is worth noting that none of these brilliant schools could exist except as free schools.

Take School 21. The founders wanted a broader approach to education, encompassing academic study, well-being and problem solving. Serving pupils of all backgrounds in Stratford, east London, School 21 is outperforming the national average on every metric, and is rated outstanding, with the inspectors commenting:

“Outstanding leadership has produced a highly effective school within a short time. Pupils across the school make exceptional progress … The behaviour of pupils is outstanding”.


Individual examples such as these inspire, just as the overall statistics reassure. Yet the policy is not perfect and can be improved in one important respect; namely, funding. The Treasury has not provided enough. It is as though Apple produced the iPhone, found it successful, and then declared it should produce fewer of them. Free schools must be championed and promoted, and be given sufficient funding to allow this to happen. Their potential to raise standards through competition must be properly realised. The Treasury’s historic hostility to surplus places has masked school failure by forcing parents to send their children to failing schools, thereby keeping their pupil registers artificially high.

Yet this should not detract from the theme of today’s debate. Free schools, in levels of engagement from teachers and parents, their impact on pupils, and educational outcomes, are speaking for themselves. The impact is profound and their contribution to improving educational standards beyond doubt. Free schools are living proof that poor-performing public monopolies harm the most disadvantaged and that, only by breaking them, can we give all the citizens of this country the public services they truly deserve.