If Gove has won a battle for free schools, why are they so expensive?

It has been described as the most radical overhaul of the school system since the introduction of comprehensives. Ed Balls condemned it as ‘the most profoundly unfair piece of social engineering in this generation’. Yet on Monday night, the 2010 Academies Bill was passed by 317 votes to 225.

Clearly, to be condemned so vehemently by the shadow education secretary is a badge of honour and not something I’d want to take away from Michael Gove. The boy done good. But to any impartial observer the most distinctive thing about the 2010 Academies Act is just how modest it is.

Take Section 12, which stipulates that only charities are allowed to set up academies. The coalition’s education policy is often compared to the educational reforms passed by the Swedish government of 1992-93, but that legislation allowed commercial providers to set up taxpayer-funded, independent schools — what we now refer to as ‘free schools’. By insisting that only charities can set up free schools, the coalition is creating a rod for its back since most charities aren’t in a position to raise the necessary capital to cover their set-up costs.

True, the 203 academies already in existence are owned by charitable trusts, but they were paid for by the government. New Labour initially insisted that academy sponsors needed to come up with £2 million to put towards the build costs, but that was a fig leaf designed to give the impression that the cost of creating academies was being shared by the public and private sectors. In fact, the average cost of setting up an academy is £30 million — and that applies whether the school in question is a new build or a refurb. So the question remains: who’s going to pay for free schools? 

To hear some critics of the government talk, you’d think the billions of pounds that have been saved from dismantling the Building Schools for the Future programme are going to be diverted to the free schools programme.