The Approach to Selecting Free Schools;

NUT BRIEFING: KEY FINDINGS OF NATIONAL AUDIT OFFICE REPORT INTO FREE SCHOOLS

DECEMBER 2013

On 11 December 2013 the National Audit Office (NAO) published a damning report into the free schoolprogramme.[1]The reportlooked at three areas:

•the approach to selecting free schools;

•the programme’s costs; and

•early indications of the performance and oversight of open schools.

The overall purpose of the report was to establish whether the Department for Education (DfE)had achieved value for money in these areas. The NAO concluded that “to date, the primary factor in decision-making has been opening schools at pace, rather than maximising value for money” and that the DfE “will need to exert more control to contain a rising cost trend.”[2]

The reportidentified the following serious failingsin the programme and its administration:

1. The DfE underestimated the capital costs of free schools.The average cost of acquiring and convertingfree school premises (£6.6m) was more than twice as high as the DfE’soriginal estimate from 2010 (£3m).[3]

Over half of open free schools - 60 per cent (107) – opened in temporary accommodation at a cost to the DfE of at least £27m.[4]

The DfE paid £27million over its valuations in 50 per cent of the cases (58 schools to date) where it has acquired the freehold for a free school.[5]

1. Cancelled free schools have cost £700,000 in total. The DfE wrote off this sum because 15 approved free schools were cancelled or withdrawn. Reasons included the lack of a suitable and affordable site, attracting too few pupils, or concerns over the capacity of proposers.[6]

1. The DfE spent £8m to pay off the debts of private schools which became free schools.The conversion of 15 private schools to free school status also involved spending £15 million on facilities andaccommodation.[7]

1. Free schools employ more unqualified teachers than other state-funded schools.Over 11 per cent of teachers in 64 open free schools that responded to the School Workforce Census in November 2012 were unqualified, compared with just under four per cent for all state-funded schools in England.[8]

1. Free schools are employing admission practices that are outside the Admissions Code.As of August 2013 the DfE had agreed derogations from the Admissions Code for 35 free schools. Over threequarters (27) of these gave priority to the children of their school’s founders – equivalent to 16 per cent of the 174 free schools opened by September 2013.[9]

The report also noted that 21 objections were raised with the Office of the Schools Adjudicator between September 2011 and October 2013 about the admissions policies of free schools. Of these, ten were either fully or partially upheld.[10]

1. Free schools are not representative of their communities. Free school pupils are less likely to be entitled to free school meals than pupils in neighbouring schools: 16 per cent of free school pupils, compared to 25 per cent in neighbouring schools and 17 per cent across England. They are also less likely to have English as an additional language than pupils in neighbouring schools: 18 per cent of free school pupils, compared to 36 per cent in neighbouring schools and 15 per cent across England.[11]

1. Free schools are not addressing the school place crisis.Despite the severe shortage in primary places, just 34 per cent of projected places in the 174 open free schools are mainstream primary. Only 19 per cent of secondary places are in areas of high or severe need.[12]

In total, 42 free schools have opened in districts with no forecast need. The estimated total capital cost of these schools is at least £241m out of a projected total of £950m for mainstream schools.[13]

Furthermore, there have been no applications to open mainstream primary free schools in half of districts with a high or severe forecast need for new school places by 2015-16.[14]

1. Many free schools are undersubscribed.Overall, free schools only filled around three-quarters of their planned admissions when they first opened. In 2012, just 16 per cent of newly opened free schools reached their published admissions number (PAN). The NAO estimated that, to date, 86 per cent of free schools’ total number of planned admission places had been filled.[15]

1. There is no overall focus on deprived areas.The Government consistently claims that free schools are targeted at the most deprived areas. However, the NAO concluded that has been no “clear pattern in the percentage of schools that have opened in the most deprived areas.Forty-six per cent of schools opening in 2011 were in these areas, 54 per cent of 2012/13 openers, and 40 per cent of September 2013 openers.” The report also noted that the DfE “did not have deprivation data for over a third of proposed Wave 4 schools [opening in 2014 or beyond] as it lacked postcode information about the location of the proposed school.”[16]

1. The DfE lacks effective systems of oversight of financial management and governance.The report notes that monitoring is deliberately light touch and that it “is informed by other parties including whistleblowers and relies on timely compliance by schools”.[17]

However, the NAO found that:“Compliance has not been consistent in the Programme’s early years”. For example, free schools must file audited financial statements with the EFA but “for the latest financial year available, 2011-12, nine (56 per cent) of the 16 single academy trusts with open free schools in that year did not submit these statements by the Agency’s 31 December 2012 deadline, compared to 13 per cent of all academies.”[18]

The NAO concluded that: “As the programme grows, more systematic data analysis will be needed to identify and manage emerging risks”.[19]

It also appears that free schools have opened despite serious concerns expressed by DfE officials. The NAO said that: “Three free schools from Waves 2 and 3 were opened having been assessed with an overall ‘red’ rating (the highest level of risk) at this point.”[20]

1. The DfE has no framework for assessing the impact of free schools on existing schools or their value for money.The report found that the DfE “has yet to set out how it will assess the overall impact of free schools on the performance of other schools in a local area.” Italso said that the DfE’s “approach does not yet consider how investment in selected schools maps to the programme’s objectives and will require a full set of indicators to support a clear assessment of the programme’s value for money.”[21]

The full report can be downloaded at:

Comment on the report from NUT General Secretary Christine Blower can be found at:

1

[1] National Audit Office, ‘Establishing Free Schools’, 11 December 2013. Available at:

[2]Ibid., p. 10.

[3] Ibid., p. 28.

[4] Ibid., p. 31.

[5] Ibid., p. 31.

[6] Ibid., p. 21.

[7] Ibid., p. 26.

[8] Ibid., p. 43.

[9] Ibid., p. 43.

[10] Ibid., p. 43.

[11] Ibid., p. 42.

[12] Ibid., p. 15.

[13] Ibid., p. 15.

[14] Ibid., p. 18.

[15] Ibid., p. 41.

[16] Ibid., p. 20.

[17] Ibid., p. 9.

[18] Ibid., p. 42.

[19] Ibid., p. 9.

[20] Ibid., p. 21.

[21] Ibid., p. 43.