Elizabeth Truss

Ignore Margaret Hodge and the BBC – free schools are working

Today’s NAO report on free schools has recognised the ‘clear progress’ we have made opening 174 schools in three years with significantly lower costs than Labour’s school programmes. But, as Isabel HardmanToby Young and Policy Exchange’s Jonathan Simons have pointed out, instead of reading the report the BBC and PAC Chairwoman Margaret Hodge have chosen to ignore the facts.

The BBC’s headline claims ‘free school costs budget trebled to £1.5bn, says report.’ But the NAO report states that ‘many new schools have been established quickly and at relatively low cost’. At £6.6 million per school, free schools are being delivered at a fraction of the costs of Labour’s Building Schools for the Future scheme which cost £25 million per school. As the NAO’s report recognises, we have also cut the cost of building a new school by around 45% compared to previous school building programmes.

The BBC also claims that ‘schools were not always where places were most needed’ and Margaret Hodge has said ‘The Department has got to be much more rigorous about how it assesses applications for free schools and prioritises need and value for money.’ But again, the NAO confirms that 7 in 10 free schools are opening in areas facing a shortage of school places. And we are also spending £5 billion on new school places in areas where there is a shortage – more than double the amount spent by Labour over an equivalent four year period. Labour did nothing to create new primary school places – in fact they cut 200,000 places in the middle of a baby boom. Yet again, Labour have the nerve to blame this Government for a problem they created and can now do nothing but snipe from the sidelines about our successes.

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