Free schools failing
Durham Free School, one of the government’s state-funded schools outside of local authority control, has been forced to close after being rated inadequate by Ofsted. Shortly after, Grindon Hall, a free school in Sunderland, was judged by Ofsted to require urgent improvements. Ofsted criticised the school, which is a Christian faith school, for failing to teach its pupils about diversity of race, religion and sexuality in British society. They also found that the school was not tackling “prejudice-based bullying” or pupils’ use of racist and homophobic language. The free school programme, as...