What the National Audit Office really said about free schools

Is the free schools project unnecessary and costly? If you take your news from the BBC, then you might be forgiven for answering ‘yes’: the Beeb’s reporting on the National Audit Office’s latest report on Michael Gove’s pet policy suggests that the whole thing has been an expensive vanity project. The report itself doesn’t seem to say quite the same thing, though: it argues that the Education department has ‘achieved clear progress on a policy priority’ and that ministers face a ‘rising capital cost trend’ in spite of much lower average construction costs than previous programmes (free schools often use existing buildings, while the department allows smaller space standards and reduced building specifications to create an average reduction in construction costs of 45%). It concludes that the success of the free schools programme depends ‘on how free schools perform in the future’, which is an acknowledgement that it is rather too early to either fete or condemn free schools.