Toby Young Toby Young

This year’s exam results for free schools prove Michael Gove was right

As readers of The Spectator will know, I have been banging the drum for free schools for eight years – almost as long as Michael Gove, who first started talking about them in 2007. But it has been hard to persuade people of their virtues without any results to point to. Education is plagued by crackpot theories and un-evidenced policies and free schools were often dismissed as just another fad.

Until this week. Now, at last, the advocates of the free schools policy have some results to point to – and they are spectacular. Last week, King’s College London Mathematics School, a specialist sixth form college that opened in 2014, topped the Times’s A level results table. Ninety-nine per cent of its pupils got A*/A/B or better, making it the top performer in the country – not just better than every other state school, but better than every fee-paying school too.

Other free schools that got great A level results include the London Academy of Excellence in Newham, which got 15 of its students into Oxbridge, and Harris Westminster Academy, which saw 70 per cent of its pupils secure places at Russell Group universities.

Yesterday’s GCSE results for free schools were equally impressive. Reach Academy Feltham, which opened in 2012, saw 96 per cent of its pupils get good GCSE results in both English and maths. That could be enough to make it the most successful non-selective secondary school in the GCSE results table when it’s published later this year. Critics will claim the school only managed to achieve these results because its pupils are atypical, but the only sense in which they’re unusual is that an above average number of them are from disadvantaged backgrounds – 34.3 per cent compared to a national average of 29.3

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in