Labour must back free schools, former minister warns

Labour must embrace the notion of free schools if it wants to get back in power, one of its former education ministers has warned.

In an essay for the New Statesman magazine, Lord Adonis, the Labour peer who was the minister for schools in the Blair and Brown governments, argues that free schools are his party's creation and that the Conservatives are "just pretending to do something fundamentally different" with education.

Adonis – credited as the architect of academy schools – writes that Labour set up dozens of free schools, which are merely academies that have not replaced another school.

Free schools, one of the coalition's flagship education reforms, are state-funded primaries and secondaries started by parents, teachers, charities and private firms. They have greater freedom to change the timings of the school day, teachers' pay and the subjects they teach.

The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, has said he opposes free schools, while Andy Burnham, a former shadow education secretary, has described them as a "reckless gamble". Labour's current shadow education secretary, Stephen Twigg, told the Liverpool Daily Post last October that he would back free schools if they helped poorer children and the wider community.

Adonis writes that while the Tories' free schools are less likely to be in deprived neighbourhoods than Labour's ere, they are still a "powerful engine of equality and social mobility".

"The only reason why the Tories invented the term free school was to pretend they were doing something fundamentally different instead of continuing one of Labour's most successful policies," Adonis argues.

"Free schools are not for profit. The Tories would need to change the law to allow profit making, and I would oppose this. Second, free schools are comprehensive schools. Like all academies, they are not allowed to select by academic ability. Again, this is the law and I would oppose any change."

He cites Toby Young's West London free school, which has been heavily criticised for making Latin compulsory for pupils up to the age of 14, writing: "Why should children have to go to private schools such as the Latymer upper school next door, with its fees of £15,000 a year, to learn Latin?

"And why should we accept that children are unable to learn Latin in the state system and, therefore, that classicists entering top universities overwhelmingly come from public schools?

"Labour will get back into government by having a better plan for the future, not by opposing changes which are working well. This applies above all in education, which is one of our success stories."

When applications for the first free schools opened in the summer of 2010, 323 groups submitted bids. As a result, 24 free schools opened in September 2011 and a further eight were approved to open in September or soon afterwards.

The Department for Education received 281 applications to set up free schools starting in September 2012, and has approved 87.

In response to Adonis, Twigg said Labour would not have chosen the free schools approach, but would support "good free schools" and judge whether, based on evidence, they raised standards, narrowed the gap between poor and rich children and met local need.

"Unfortunately, the government's approach means that is not always the case," he said.