Academy chains taking over the free schools project

In the pipeline...DfE's list of upcoming free schools shows large academy chains as prominent

This point may have been made on this website before, but is the original concept of the “free school” dead and buried?

Well, the feeling that this is the case was certainly reinforced this week, as the Department for Education published its latest list of frees which are “in development”.

The initial idea behind free schools, as they were introduced under the coalition from 2010, was that they were a “from-the-ground-up” initiative, part of David Cameron’s much-discussed-but-soon-largely-forgotten “big society” concept.

So parents, and so the spin went, even classroom teachers could be "free" to set up their own institutions, giving them the chance to plug local gaps in provision with new institutions.