Gove has 400m going spare

[bochead]

I was cross enough about the 30m being wasted on parent supporters for the new EHCP's. I'm furious at 400m going on propping up the free school vision.

When are our children gonna get a few crumbs from the table?

www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/may/10/gove-lunatic-raid-free-schools

In the main I agree with you however we do have a local ABA based school which was in the pipeline for years and managed to get on the free school wagon. It's just been rated good by ofsted and the parents involved have done amazing job. It would have been very difficult to have raised funds for an ABA school and made it sustainable especially as Leeds LA response had been open their own autism school in competition! So there are good egs out there where free school money has helped get projects off ground. We need more of these schools where there is genuine gap in provision, it would be shame if these schools got tarred with same brush.

Isn't having two schools for autism good though as they tend to be very oversubscribed and also parents have a choice between an Aba or not Aba school

I'm cheering on the first online school due to be opened in 2015 for similar reasons.

Occasionally the free school movement is allowing various useful things to breakthrough the usual town hall resistance. However that's a VERY small drop in the total 400m being allocated and lets face it the need to fill the gaps in SN services has been glaringly obvious for years. Hanging onto coat tails isn't good enough imho and doesn't remove the danger posed by special academies for the much wider group of children who aren't able to get places at the few shining lights in a sea of guff.

He should give it to IPSEA with no conditions imo.

autumnsmum 2 schools would be good if parents were getting a choice but the LA is wanting to fill its own places first now and not fund places at the free school so parents are being 'pushed' towards their own school.

Ah but if IPSEA got that kind of funding there would be no more school vegetable patches Star!

It's pretty hard for me to look at this without getting my honey badger head on, tbh.

I look at my kids, and look at what the powers that be think is "unreasonable public expenditure" for their education. Or stuff that is deemed to be "incompatible with the efficient education of other children."

I can see where niche application of free school policy works - but on its current scale and scatter-gun approach, how the shitting blazes is it not "unreasonable public expenditure" that is "incompatible with the efficient education of other children?"