TOT: Free schools and the BBC

From the Telegraph

The National Audit Office's report on free schools is generally favourable, though you wouldn't know it if you relied on this article on the BBC's website.

The NAO report found that the average cost of establishing a new free school is £6.6m, compared to an average cost of creating a new school under the last government of £25m. "New approaches have led to much lower average construction costs than in previous programmes," it says. Yet the BBC chose to go with the following headline: "Free schools costs trebled to £1.5b."

The report found that 87 per cent of free school primary places are in areas that have "high or severe need" for additional places, with 70 per cent of all free school places falling into that category. The BBC reported this as follows: "The NAO said? many schools were not in areas of need."

The report says that 18 of the 25 free schools inspected by Ofsted so far have been rated "Good" or "Outstanding". That's a hit rate of 72 per cent, well above the national average of 64 per cent since Ofsted's tough new inspection regime was introduced. But you wouldn't know that from reading the BBC's account, which simply records the fact that two free schools "have been judged to be providing an inadequate standard of education".

The report says that 86 per cent of the places created by the 174 free schools that have opened so far have been filled. The BBC ignores that and quotes "Public Accounts Committee chairwoman Margaret Hodge" (without identifying her as a Labour MP): "Over £1bn will have been spent on the free schools programme by March 2014, yet on opening, one in four desks at free schools were empty."

The general impression created by the BBC article, underlined by its grotesque misrepresentation of the NAO report, is that the government is wasting money on free schools in areas where they're not needed while ignoring the critical shortage of places elsewhere. In fact, not only are 70 per cent of all free schools places in areas of "high or severe need" but the government is spending an additional £5bn on new school places up to 2015. That's more than double what the previous government spent on creating new school places in a comparable time period.

The author of this shockingly misleading article is Hannah Richardson who has a long track record of inaccurate reporting when it comes to free schools. I've blogged about Richardson's Left-wing bias twice before (see here and here) and it was picked up on the Guido Fawkes website here.

Isn't it about time James Harding, the BBC News Director, told her to be a little more even-handed?

Bill

Reply to
Bill Wright
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Haven't you missed the point of this blog which is DIY. Shouldn't you be en couraging home-schooling?

Now piss of you troll.

Reply to
Weatherlawyer

Bill Wright scribbled...

Applications to work at the Daily Heil are not accepted here.

Reply to
Artic

In article , Bill Wright writes

Fuck off Bill, TOT marking or not, this is not your own personal playground to further your political agendas.

Reply to
fred

She probably only read the NAO executive report. It is here

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It is a bit downbeat, I wonder why.

The full report is here

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The Times had a very similar article to The Telegraph. It looks like both The Times and The Telegraph have read the full report, whereas the BBC journo hasn't.

Reply to
brightside S9

I think there is a clear case for reporting this to some regulator.

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And of course your MP.

And of course blogging it on any site you can.

Usually the BBC can get away with a bland denial, but if the facts are as you say they are, that is a step too far, and there are bodies supposed to handle this sort of thing.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Its exactly the same as the IPCC method. refer to some paper, select the one line that could possibly be construed in a way that fits the political agenda, and quote that, ignoring the fact that 90% of the rest contradicts it.

It has always been going on. I had an argument with a friend who has been in CND forever. He assured me that there were X excess deaths in the 60s due to Y radiological release and that a report had been written and the case was closed to so there.

I spend 4 hours googling, and all I found was a report by the new scientist, picked up by the BBC that said that such and such deaths were

*predicted* by professor P and *COULD* happen.. No study emerged that ever found any statistical evidence to support the prediction.

In short my friend had remembered as fact, what turned out to be unsubstantiated rumour.

The BBC in this case wants to paint free schools as being expensive, elitist and not very good and in the wrong place.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Where it might just do some good, as opposed to spraying it around usenet where it just get up folks noses.

Whining on Usenet achieves nothing.

Tim

Reply to
Tim+

I am not so sure actually: certainly its a minority audience, but uk.d-i-y is surprisingly sophisticated.

Anyway, the correct response has been given, this is how you D-I-Y a political issue. :-)

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

So please refrain.

Reply to
Richard

I love all this: in my country we don't have "free schools" and the National Audit Office is an English body which doesn't operate in Scotland so this really goes on the foreign news pages. Fascinating!

Reply to
Geoff Pearson

What .. a surprise;( NOT!...

Reply to
tony sayer

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