Cameron’s crusade (and mine)

Even I was taken aback when, during the election campaign, David Cameron pledged to create 500 new free schools if the Conservatives won a majority. Was he being serious? Five hundred is twice the number that opened during the last parliament and, to be frank, some of those probably shouldn’t have done. Two have closed already — the Discovery New School and the Durham Free School — and a few more will probably shut before 2020. Was this just intended as another negotiating chip for use in the coalition talks in the event of a hung parliament?

I don’t think so. I bumped into Cameron at a party in July and the first thing he said to me was that he wanted to keep the momentum of the free schools programme going. He’s in deadly earnest about it. When he retires in five years’ time, he wants to be able to point to 750 new schools as part of his legacy.

In spite of the teething problems, there’s no doubt it has been a successful programme to date. Yes, two have closed, but that’s quite a low rate of attrition considering that 255 are still open. And those that have opened are above average, according to Ofsted. A quarter of the free schools it has inspected so far are ‘Outstanding’, compared to just 10 per cent of schools overall.

Critics complain that they cost too much, are being set up in areas where they’re not needed and only cater to middle-class families. In fact, the average cost of setting up a free school is less than a quarter of the average cost of setting up a new secondary under Labour, 70 per cent of them are in areas where there’s a basic need for more places and free schools are eight times more likely to be opened in England’s most deprived areas than the least.