The Department for Education has just released a statement about free schools, which can be translated as saying:
Oi Clegg! Free schools: clue’s in the name. They don’t have to listen to what you or any other politician thinks about the curriculum and they’re as free as private schools to take on staff who have not gone through the QTS teacher training programme. So speculate as much as you like, Cleggy, about the liberties you’d like to extinguish after 2015. The genie of school freedom is out of the bottle and won’t be put back in under this government.
(My understanding is that David Laws is at one with Michael Gove over this, and made statements last week to this effect – I suspect Laws be just as appalled over the implications of Clegg’s overtures to the teaching unions). Gove is Education Secretary, Laws is schools minister – and here’s the official statement from the department which they run:-
‘Free schools are raising standards and giving parents more choice.
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