Milestone as free school bids go to interview

The Department for Education does not publish details of the bids it receives until they are accepted.

However the New Schools Network, which works with people wanting to launch their own schools, told the Yorkshire Post there had been 18 groups looking to open their establishments next year. It is not known how many submitted official bids.

Key interviews to determine the success of free school bids are taking place this week with Department for Education officials.

West Yorkshire is set to be at the forefront of this new movement with three already open, another five in the pipeline with Government backing and at least six other groups bidding to open schools in the county in 2013.

There are at least three groups in Leeds which are known to have reached the crucial interview stage: The Free School Leeds, which is being led by Pat Payne of the Leeds and Bradford Dyslexia Association, the Steiner Academy Leeds, which is being backed by parents involved in Steiner kindergartens, and the Leeds Jewish Free School a secondary being proposed by the Jewish Brodetsky primary school in the city.

Plans for free schools in Halifax include a co-educational Islamic primary and a post 16 vocational free school in the Maltings building being led by Hipperholme and Lightcliffe School.

It is unclear whether either of these bids have been invited to a DfE interview.

In Bradford two private schools, the Girls’ Grammar School, Bradford, and Netherleigh and Rossefield School in Heaton, are also applying to convert to become state funded free schools in 2013.

The city has two of the country’s first free schools with the King’s Science Academy and Rainbow Primary opening in the same building in Manningham as a temporary base, in September last year. Both schools are planning to relocate and could also be launching more free schools elsewhere.

King’s Science Academy has been founded by Bradford-born teacher and Oxford graduate Sajid Hussain Raza, who was part of the Future Leaders programme aimed at fast-tracking top teachers into senior positions.

The school is planning to move into a new £8.9m base in the Lidget Green area of Bradford, where there is a shortage of school places, later this year.

Mr Raza told the Yorkshire Post that King’s was also waiting to hear from the DfE about whether its plan to launch a second free school in Darnall, Sheffield in 2013 had been successful.

There are also reports that the Rainbow School in Bradford, set up by enterprise organisation ATL, formerly Asian Trade Link, wants to set up a second school in Leeds. Rainbow School is also in talks with the Government over finding a new site to move to within Bradford in 2013.

King’s Science Academy, Rainbow and Batley Grammar were the first three free schools to open in Yorkshire last year.

This September four more schools will open in the region, including three more in Bradford.

Dixons Academy, one of the most successful schools in Bradford in the GCSE league tables is to open two new free schools, both primary and secondary which are to be located in a former NHS building close to the city centre. The One-in-a-Million charity, linked to Bradford City football club is also opening a new school next to the Valley Parade ground.

Yorkshire’s first special needs free school will also open this year, the Lighthouse School in Leeds, set up by a group of parents of autistic children. There are two free schools with approval to open after 2012, a parent led school Birkenshaw and a plan for a new school in inner-city Hull.