Eighteen free schools closed without building and site costs being publicly disclosed

Eighteen of the government’s free schools have closed without the cost to the taxpayer of opening them ever having been disclosed –in most cases years after the closure actually happened.

The Department for Education has still only disclosed building and site costs for fewer than one in three of the free schools it has opened since 2011, with no public disclosures on this subject for three-and-a-half years.

Now fresh analysis by Education Uncovered has shown that projects going back right to the policy’s inception, in 2011, have seen costs remaining undeclared, including some schools which closed years ago.

This fresh data trawl was prompted by a minister’s answer to a Parliamentary Written Question, asked by the Labour peer Lord Watson. This had asked whether the government intended to update its published data on the capital costs of free schools, and why this spreadsheet had not been updated since February 2020.

The academies minister Baroness Barran replied: “The department publishes capital costs for all schools on GOV.UK once all works have been completed and costs are finalised. Given that these can be large and complex projects, this can take some time between first opening and publication. A further batch of costs will be published in due course.”

What has the government published?