Member

As my noble friend Lady Evans of Bowes Park set out, free schools have been the engines of innovation in our school system, and their impact can be seen not just in their outcomes but, crucially, in the scale they achieve, as other schools and trusts seek to implement their approaches. Schools such as Michaela and Mercia have transformed what any of those working in education thought was possible, with Progress 8 scores above 2. Between Committee and Report, the Government have announced the fate of the free schools pipeline: approving 31 projects, cancelling 46 and putting 59 in jeopardy. In all of those cases, the trusts had worked with the local authority to propose the school, and in all cases, but especially the special and AP schools, the local authorities wholeheartedly welcomed the provision. However, these are the schools the Government want to stop, even where the local authority is fully supportive.