Deadly threat to state education

Despite an Ipsos Mori survey finding that an overwhelming 96 per cent of parents and the public are opposed to free schools, Education Secretary Michael Gove made it possible on Friday for parents, teachers and charities to apply to set them up.

The first is expected to open in September 2011.

Critics warned that only the wealthiest parents would have the time and money available to run a free school and said that it is inevitable that management of the schools would be commissioned to private providers.

Under coalition policy the government will give free schools the same amount of money for each pupil that it would cost to place them in a state school.

Unlike academy schools, there are no extra funds for the plans which form part of the original Tory manifesto aspiration to create 220,000 new places to fuel a "supply-side revolution."

Anti-Academies Alliance national secretary Alasdair Smith said: "At a time when the budget is being cut all it will do is take money from existing schools and so rob the local authority to pay private providers."

Mr Gove claimed free schools would reduce the attainment gap between rich and poor.

"We want to learn from what's happened in America, Sweden, Canada, other countries that have given schools a greater degree of autonomy," he said.

But Swedish education has dropped steadily down international league tables since free schools were introduced.

Sweden's National Education Agency says that since the policy took effect in the 1990s "fairly unambiguously segregation has increased."

And a study by Stanford University in California found that pupils in just 17 per cent of US charter schools, the equivalent of free schools, made more progress than their peers in state schools.

Pupils in 37 per cent of charter schools did worse than their counterparts.

Education union NASUWT general secretary Chris Keates said the evidence showed free schools are "more costly to run, do not deliver better standards than other well-funded schools and are socially and racially segregated in terms of their admissions."

Several privateers are said to have been eagerly anticipating the new policy.

Mr Smith said Anders Hultin, the chief executive of Global Education Management Systems which runs 12 private schools in Britain, "was literally rubbing his hands with glee at the prospect of running schools in the name of parents.

"Private providers claim to be about parents but it's about them getting their hand on a steady stream of taxpayers' money."

NUT union general secretary Christine Blower said the policy amounted to the "dismantling of our education system, turning it over to unaccountable, unelected companies.

"There should be no place within education for private companies to profit. These profits can only be made at the expense of funding and investment in children's education."