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