Free nursery, provided by property finance charity in partnership with academy chain, “ratchets up” privatisation creep

Sceptics have raised questions over a project by a major academy chain which uses sponsorship from the charitable offshoot of a property finance company to provide what seems like an almost-too-good-to-be-true offer to disadvantaged families.

Since last September, the Harris Federation has been running a nursery - at one of its primary academies in Peckham – which is absolutely free, with funding coming seemingly in its entirety from a charity called Urban Exposure Philanthropy.

The development is just the latest instance of what appears to be a blurring of the line between public and private at Harris, which is controlled by the Conservative peer and party donor Lord Harris and, as this website has revealed, is receiving a seven-figure sums from private donations.

While the academy chain has highlighted the benefits of this initiative for disadvantaged children and their parents, one prominent academic said the move, in “normalising” the idea of private rather than state provision, “ratchets up the creep of privatisation to another level”.

But the charity has hinted that this initiative could be just the first of many.