Eight free schools to open

Projects backed by education secretary Michael Gove include four with religious ethos

Eight proposals to set up free schools, ranging from a Hindu school in Leicester to a Montessori primary in Sussex, have won formal approval to open, education secretary Michael Gove will say today.

The projects backed by Gove include four with a religious ethos; the Etz Chaim Jewish primary school in north London, the I-Foundation Hindu primary school in Leicester, St Luke's church of England primary in Camden, and the Discovery new school in West Sussex, which will have an Anglican ethos and also offer a Montessori curriculum.

One proposal, the Ark Conway school in Hammersmith and Fulham, is backed by Ark, an existing academy sponsor which is working with a parents' group. Woodpecker Hall is a new primary being set up by an oversubscribed academy school in Enfield. The Stour Valley community school in Suffolk emerged from a local parents' campaign to save a middle school from closure, while the Norwich free school is being created by a group of teachers.

Gove yesterday urged councils to support free school proposals wherever a new school is needed, as the government revealed that it has received 249 applications from groups wanting to play a role in the Conservatives' flagship policy. Free schools are state-funded but independently run and set up by parents, teachers or charities.

Councils will be obliged to look for academy or free school proposals if new schools are needed, under the terms of the education bill published on Thursday.

The government is seeking to give fresh impetus to free schools, the most prominent part of Cameron's Big Society idea, after months in which the policy has come under attack from unions and the coalition's Liberal Democrat partners.

More than 400 parents, teachers and charities are due to take part today in a conference on free schools which will be addressed by experts from the US, where charter schools educate more than 1m children.

The conference will be addressed by speakers including Joel Klein, who ran New York's public schools until the start of this year and is an advocate of the charter school movement, that has inspired Gove's reforms.

Speaking on a visit to a school yesterday, Gove said he wanted to encourage councils to back academy proposals. "That would be the first choice we would like local authorities to make, when new schools are needed, they should be free schools or academies."

The government has given initial approval to 35 groups. Proposals which have received initial approval include the Maharishi school in Lancashire, a private school where children practise transcendental meditation at the beginning and end of the school day, a Muslim boys' school in Blackburn, and the McAuley College Academy, a proposed free school in Hull which aims to enable every child to get to university.

Free schools have faced intense opposition from unions including the GMB, which has accused the backers of a free school in Wandsworth of setting its catchment area to exclude poorer children. Liberal Democrat party members last year voted to campaign against free schools because they "risk increasing social divisiveness and inequity". Teaching unions share concerns that creating new schools will lead to a two-tier system.

Gove said yesterday: "Yes, there are opponents, people trying to stop this. That's why it's so important that reformers across party and across countries talk to each other and know there are people who are attempting to start new schools and realise that far from being individuals with a vision they are part of a global movement to transform education for the better."

Other speakers at the conference include Josephine Baker, executive director of the Washington public charter school board, which approves applications from new charter schools and oversees existing ones. She will urge teachers not to oppose the changes.

She said: "One of the values to people who teach of being in a charter school is its approach to education, its teachers are at the table when decisions are made, not because they are members of a union but because they bring to that table a certain kind of expertise, there is a collaborative approach to how everything takes place."

Gove's move to win back the initiative over free schools follows the appearance at Tory conference last year of Geoffrey Canada, who is credited with turning around black under-achievement in Harlem and has been hailed as a pioneer in education by Barack Obama.

In an interview at the time, Canada accused the unions of being a brake on innovation.

Echoing these concerns, Baker said that it was far harder to dismiss a failing teacher in a public school. "It takes such a tremendous amount of effort to get rid of an ineffective teacher [in the public system]. Charter schools have annual contracts, there is no such thing as tenure. Some people are willing to exchange that for the opportunity to be part of the planning, part of the collaborative process.

"Our teachers do not have to be union members. There has been considerable opposition because the law does not give them any clout, they oppose it, they discourage people who are in [public schools] from leaving [public schools] but they ... don't really have an impact."

Results from the US have been mixed. Research carried out at Stanford University found that more than a third of charter schools had results that were worse than the traditional system. But the US research also found that poor children and those with English as a second language did well in charter schools.

Jeevan Vasagar

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