Why aren’t there more free schools? Halfway through this coalition government and we have just 72; we’d need 400 opening a year simply to keep pace with population growth. When I interviewed Michael Gove for our Christmas double issue, I asked him about all this. I didn’t put it in the magazine as this is a rather technical issue, but I thought some Coffee Housers may be interested. Gove said he expected free school project to follow Moore’s Law of semiconductors (ie, capacity doubling every two years).
Under this government, within a year of legislation passing, you’ve got a couple of dozen schools established and a year later, like Moore’s Law of Microchips, you have double the capacity entering the system, in fact that’s twice as fast as Moore’s Law. I think it is an unprecedented level of new school creation.
That’s the optimistic case. But there is a major, government-created factor retarding the efforts of education entrepreneurs.
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