What on earth is the point of setting up free schools when the education budget is being slashed?

[notsureatall]

The education budget is being slashed by 10-20%.

If a parent/ group wants to set up a free school, they will have big set-up costs, including buying/ adapting premises, recruiting staff, buying school equipment.

Where on earth is the logic in that? Where is the money going to come from?

Surely with all the cuts going on at the moment, free schools should only be allowed to open in areas where there are not enough school places?

I agree. Our local school is falling apart and is so grotty. It has been awaiting complete refurbishment for a long while. Now that it was approved it is going to be taken away again.

I would love to see if David Cameron or Michael Gove would send their kids there. In those conditions. I doubt it somehow. Anyone who can around here sends their kids elsewhere by moving or paying private.

And the standards keep falling.........

Quite ,my sentiments as well .

the money is coming from the schools they are no longer going to repair or rebuild

we need a new school here so they are going to build a new religious school! lordy

It's going to come from the bog-standard comps that no-one cares about LEaving them even worse than before. Hurrah for parental choice.

or even slashed by up to 40%.
They will take the money from state schools to pay, bleed them dry if they have to.
I agree it makes no sense.
These cuts are idealogical. Which is another way of saying, the people responsible for making these decisions don't give a flying fuck about the children in state schools.
seriously, I couldn't be more bloody angry.
cancel the schools refurbishment scheme, no money for that, but money can be found for the costs of setting up new schools?
do me a bloody favour.

These cuts are because the government has been spending £4 for every £3 income it receives. That is not sustainable.

Rightly or wrongly, the current government thinks that BSF is wasteful, with schemes taking up to 3 years to get through the bureaucracy before any work starts. They also point out that, of the 200 secondary schools that should have been rebuilt by the end of 2008, only 35 have been completed with a further 13 refurbished. They believe it should be possible to produce better value for money.

The money being saved from BSF will not go to pay for the new free schools. The relatively small amount available for that is coming from elsewhere in the education budget, e.g. reducing the spend on IT.

how will this work for us as we are due to move over next few years from a 3 tier to 2 tier system?

our village school,already very short on space,will need to acommadate year 5 and 6
and there is no room,currently it houses reception,yr 1,2,3 and 4 only..

the middle school in next village will no longer exist,so the extra year groups of year 7 and 8 will need to squash into our upper school,which will become a bog standard secondary!!

not happy!!

babyboom recently giddypickle. though i agree it should be possible to spot the consequences of a babyboom prior to said boom applying for school places!

actually I stand corrected: Gove et al WANTED to raise the money from the BSF, but they weren't allowed to.
they are taking it from the Free School Meals budget instead
nice

No one doubts that the country needs to balance the budget, but only a morally and intellectually barren government would take money from the poorest to set up free schools at a time when education budgets are being slashed and burned.

What Gove has actually announced are plans not to extend Free school meals pilot schemes for a while. These schemes give free school meals to all the children in the school and Gove wants more evaluation before rolling it out to other areas.

Gove claims the Schools for the Future program was badly managed. And, having recently visited one of these new schools, I think he might have a point. The school looked impressive (all gleaming chrome and glass) but the teacher's weren't happy. The class rooms were too small, the acoustics poor, and the build program went over budget before they finished the school.

Ok so he could be a bit biased - but Toby Young makes some goods points about the building programme.

"BSF was simply never going to survive in its current form in austerity Britain, regardless of the outcome of the election. It was a model of inefficiency, a textbook example of everything that was wrong with Labour?s attitude to public expenditure."

Our council wants to turn one of the failing secondary schools into an academy. But this is now one of the many cases now "up for review" by the government.

However, the local outstanding school will have their application automatically approved, if THEY want to become an academy.

And the logic is....?

The logic is that as an outstanding school they presumably know what they are doing and as part of becoming an academy they will be required to help a failing school. I really don't understand why your council would want to turn a failing school into an academy.

I'm guessing the failing school will be 'closed' and reborn as an academy. This probably requires rebuilding and hence was part of the BSF programme (so is now under review). The outstanding school will gain academy status in it's current form iyswim.

yes, I understand what the proposals are about free school meals.
if a programme is badly managed - as a matter of argument - but very much needed, do you (a) cancel it or (b) manage it better?
depends on your ideological agenda I guess.
if something is badly needed, then don't cancel it.
right?