12/12/2025

Councils will be given funding earmarked for the creation of free schools to deliver specialist places for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

5/9/2024

New schools for 2,000 children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are to open in 16 areas across England.

8/23/2023

Seven new special free schools are set to open amid a critical shortage of places for pupils with special educational needs, the Government has announced.

6/10/2022

Up to 75 new free schools - including sixth forms, specialist schools and alternative provision - will be created across England.

2/5/2021

The first 50 schools to receive £1bn funding under the Government's School Rebuilding Programme have been announced.

7/20/2020

New special free schools will provide over 3,000 extra places for pupils with the most complex needs.

9/10/2019

The Government has announced the latest round of applications for the controversial free schools programme in an effort to ‘drive up education standards’.

8/13/2019

Tory MP Suella Braverman has urged the Government to speed up the expansion of free schools which she argues act as ‘drivers of competition and innovation’.

6/14/2019

Bids to create 22 new free schools have been approved, education secretary Damien Hinds has announced.

1/11/2019

Children and families minister Nadhim Zahawi has announced the opening of two new free schools to help pupils with complex social, emotional and mental health needs.

9/25/2018

Councils would be given control of academies and have new powers to build more schools if Labour were elected, the party conference heard yesterday.

5/31/2018

Free schools are failing to offer new approaches to education and are not educating enough disadvantaged children, according to researchers.

9/27/2017

Labour will provide local authorities with the £13bn needed to repair the school estate, shadow secretary of state for education tells conference.

7/28/2017

A total of 19 local authorities have invited applications to sponsor new free schools for children with special needs.

6/14/2017

Local government leaders have renewed demands to be given more power over school admissions following the latest figures on parental choice.

4/26/2017

MPs have warned the Government its system for funding new free schools is ‘increasingly incoherent’ and ‘too often poor value for money’.

4/13/2017

The Government is due to announce a new wave of grammar schools later today that could be forced to take a quota of pupils from poorer backgrounds.

4/12/2017

The Government today announced the approval of the ‘biggest wave’ of free schools this Parliament.

3/29/2017

The Government yesterday announced the creation of a new public property company which will purchase sites for 500 new free schools.

3/8/2017

Chancellor Philip Hammond has today confirmed a £320m funding package to build 110 new free schools.

8/26/2016

Council chiefs are calling for local oversight of all school finances following a series of abuses by academies and free schools.

7/11/2016

The Church of England plans to open over 100 schools in the next five years in order ‘enhance’ provision and ‘influence’ debate.

3/22/2016

A loophole that enables nearly 2,500 academies and free schools avoid signing up to healthy school meal standards must be closed in a forthcoming child obesity strategy, town hall leaders say.

3/4/2016

Ofsted has accused a council of being ‘naive’ when it comes to illegal schools which could be operating in its area, the Yorkshire Post reports.

2/5/2016

Elected police and crime commissioners should be given new powers to set up free schools for troubled children, according to home secretary Theresa May.