I'm a parent at Harpenden Free School (soon to be renamed Harpenden Academy), posting to give anyone looking for more info on HFS an insight into the school.
It is a fairly new-ish school trying to do something innovative and a bit different to most community schools and yet being inspected by OFSTED and operating in a system designed for your average school. With that backdrop, I would say the school took a little while to find its feet but current year one and reception are now getting the best of the Free School and it will only continue to improve from here. The new head is fantastic, they have a great leadership team and we absolutely love the school.
Current reception children are doing brilliantly academically and socially, they are, in the main, incredibly happy and thoroughly enjoy school. The older year groups are very diverse because not one single child in year 3 or 4 has been with the school since it started - those kids would have been reception age before the school opened so they have moved in over the course of the last 3 years because of relocations, or unhappiness at other schools, change to finances etc (leaving private). That presents a huge challenge for the school and some parents of the eldest children worry about progress. There are many who are delighted with it though and place a lot of emphasis on how happy their children are.
Overall I would sum up the school as being a very happy place, and if children are happy and engaged, they will thrive on opportunities to discover and learn.
It is also a pretty nice school as a parent - more diverse than usual because of the admissions criteria. There's a lot to be said for a parent body where you don't all live within five streets of each other!