Free schools still homeless only weeks before opening by shortage of buildings

 
29 August 2012

Most of London’s new free schools will open in temporary accommodation or delay the start of term because of problems finding buildings.

Virtually all the new schools planned to open next month will be forced to uproot again over the coming years as permanent buildings become available. Others, including Katharine Birbal-singh’s Michaela School, have abandoned plans to open this year.

The news comes as the Government withdrew funding from a free school in Bradford just days before it was due to open. Critics said the move, which has left 30 children scrambling for a school place, was an “utter fiasco”.

Latest figures from London show three schools will delay opening for a year, including Pimlico Primary and Compass Free School in Southwark.

Doug Lewis, chairman of the Compass Schools Trust, said: “Finding a site is proving a real challenge and has already cost us — and our first intake of pupils — a year’s delay.”

A spokesman added: “Finding a site has been our main issue and has meant that 100 local children, currently in year six, will miss out on a start to secondary education that they deserve and that their parents want for them.”

Those pupils will have had to be found a place at other schools.

The CET primary school in Tower Hamlets will open on a temporary site near Mile End Tube station because its permanent location has not yet been finalised.

Its sister school, CET primary in Westminster, was forced to drop the number of places it offers to children from 90 to 60.

It had planned to open in a building in Lilestone Street, but a statement on the school website said: “Rather late in the day Westminster Council decided to use this building for other purposes.”

It will now open temporarily in a building in North Wharf Road.

Emmanuel Community School in Waltham Forest will open in a Christian centre next month until its site in Walthamstow is ready, while pupils at Southwark Free School will spend two years at the Ledbury Community Hall before they move to a new site.

At Greenwich Free School pupils will have lessons in the grounds of their permanent site while building work goes on around them.

Rachel Wolf, director of the New Schools Network, which helps groups apply to open schools, said: “Unquestionably, ‘site’ is the biggest problem and the biggest potential block to these free schools opening.

“The delays ... are a symptom of the free school movement’s success. A process that might have worked for the first couple of dozen schools will not prove fit for purpose for the hundreds that are now coming forward.”

Natalie Evans, New School Network’s chief operating officer, said: “This is something the Government really needs to think about. Finding premises is extremely difficult.”

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