Free schools
Free schools: one term down
Since the government announced its policy on free schools there has been plenty of speculation in the press about how they will operate. Dorothy Lepkowska talks to headteachers who took the plunge in September about how the fi rst term has gone
were going to manage the enormity of the task they had taken on. Taking on a free school is no less of a challenge, and in some ways
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it is more. While the head of a maintained school has the benefi t of a “family” of colleagues for mutual support and guidance within the same authority, the head of a free school may be more likely to fi nd him or herself feeling lonely, isolated or out on a limb. But many headteachers have now taken on this challenge. Some
deliberately opted for free schools having missed out at interview or been passed over for promotion, while others crave the freedom that being a free school leader may bring. For Garry Murrell, head of the Priors School, near Southam,
Warwickshire, the process of applying to become a free school was “demanding”. The Priors used to be an independent school run by a charity, but achieved free school status in September last year. The school was originally set up 15 years ago, after the local authority
tried to close the maintained school due to falling rolls. Local villages formed a charitable trust – the Friends of Priory School – to enable it to continue and kept it going through fundraising. It even has its own charity shop in Daventry. Mr Murrell initially joined the school on a part-time basis but became
head in September 2010. Currently the school has 45 pupils and the free school status funds children attending from reception onwards, but not the pre-school or nursery which numbers more than 60 children. “The whole process was more demanding than I thought it would be but I was lucky to be surrounded by some very vigorous and professional
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ecoming a headteacher for the fi rst time can be a daunting experience. Only the most supremely confi dent professional would admit to feeling no trepidation or wondering how they
people who formed part of the team and helped me to apply for free school status,” he said. He advises prospective heads to do their homework well before
embarking on the process. “In the fi rst instance it helps to have premises lined up because without this the government will not even consider the submission,” he added. “You also have to show there is a demand for places at the school and
a future projection that this will continue to be the case over the coming years. Our fi nal submission ran into one hundred pages so there is a huge amount of work to do.”
“The process is extremely time-consuming because of the procedures involved. You have to set out your ethos, how the
school will be organised and what you are working to achieve.”
If there is a school already in existence that is converting to free school
status, then this makes the process somewhat easier than setting up from scratch. But a certain amount of marketing still needs to be done, because the local authority needs to be informed and a profi le created for the new school to make the wider public aware that it is under consideration. “We have endeavoured to keep class sizes to a maximum of 20
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