Lord Harris complains: where are my new schools?

Lord Harris one of several peers to ask for news on list of free schools whose projects were paused after Labour came to power. Meanwhile, another academy "sponsor" fails in bid to introduce new audit requirements on non-academies.

Lord Harris, who presides over England’s second-largest academy chain, has complained in Parliament about a hold-up in the government giving the green light to the opening of new free schools.

The “sponsor” of the South London-based Harris Federation, which currently runs 55 schools, was speaking with nearly a year having passed since the government decided to put on hold many free school projects – the number of such schemes reported at the time was 44 – while “value for money” evaluations were carried out by the Department for Education.

Lord Harris was one of several speakers, mostly on the Conservative benches, who complained about the hold-up during the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill’s committee stage session in the House of Lords this week. He indicated that there were now more than 50 free school projects awaiting news from the DfE, although another peer repeated the number of 44.