Guest blog by Anonymous
It all
started innocently enough. Jim Gatten and Maria Evans, a mum and dad from
Barnet, decided to set up a new parent-led secondary school which they hoped
the community would embrace. They applied to become a free school, a school
independent of the local authority and accountable only to and funded directly
by the Department for Education (DfE). They advertised for other parents and
members of the community to join them in gathering enough signatures to show
the DfE that it would be full for the first 2 years after opening, a box
ticking exercise the DfE puts hopeful free school founders through. Off they
went with their clipboards to various primary school gates gathering
signatures. They got the required minimum of 250 signatures necessary for their
free school application but there was never a groundswell of local support.
Many parents who signed simply thought that a new school sounds like a good
idea, after all, these are parents setting up a school and just need a simple
no-obligation signature. No explanation was given as to the implications a free
school has on the local communities and it was 2013, before the flurry of
headlines of failing and undersubscribed free schools had hit the press.
