BRITAIN’S largest education union has branded the Tories’ flagship free schools programme a “costly experiment” after a damning study confirmed they starved local primaries of funds while increasing social segregation.

The National Education Union (NEU) blasted the havoc wrought by former education secretary Michael Gove after research into the schools by the University College London (UCL) demolished his claims they would improve standards.

Teachers instead lost their jobs and curriculums were narrowed as primaries were forced to make cuts, with tight budgets squandered on marketing to compete for student numbers rather than improving teaching standards, the researchers found.

They said there was no evidence that free schools “spurred neighbouring schools to act to directly enhance the quality of their teaching and learning.”

The surveyed primary free schools “performed worse than a matched sample of similar schools” and free schools were not linked with “any significant change” in pupils’ attainment at nearby primary schools, they added.

NEU deputy general secretary Niamh Sweeney said: “Free schools have been a costly experiment and were never intended to meet local need, often built where they were not required.

“They are symbolic of the previous government’s obsession with pushing gimmicks rather than dealing with the central challenges facing education.”

She added: “The free school programme rests on the corrosive idea that increasing competition by opening a new school is the way to drive school improvement across an area.

“The reality is that free schools have often had a damaging impact on local schools.

“As this report shows, this is particularly true in neighbourhoods with higher numbers of disadvantaged school-age children. 

”The education system as a whole is crying out for a joined-up and co-ordinated approach to place planning. We hope the new government can bring this about.”

Free schools are government-funded but not run by the local authority, do not have to follow the national curriculum and cannot select pupils based on their academic ability.

UCL researchers said when they were introduced in 2010 they were “intended to be high-quality alternatives, offering parents better choice and increasing attainment by boosting competition between local schools, driving up performance.”

But their study found that they instead led to “modest increases” in segregation for pupils speaking English as an additional language, black, Asian and ethnic minority students, and also white British students in primary free schools.

Children in areas with primary free schools are increasingly divided by ethnicity as pupils are less likely to meet peers from different backgrounds at school, it said.

The researchers attributed this to free schools creating “new options for parents to choose schools that are more homogenous than their local area, including both ‘self-segregation’ by minority-ethnic parents and perceived ‘white flight’.”

The report also warned primary free schools “had the potential to start a cycle of decline” by “negatively influencing parents’ choices and further concentrating disadvantaged students into neighbouring schools.”

Neighbouring schools were more likely to “become destabilised” by this effect if they served a deprived neighbourhood, lost students to a free school, and were downgraded to below “good” by Ofsted shortly before or after a free school opened, they added.

Lead author Dr Rob Higham, from UCL’s Faculty of Education, said: “Our findings show that the introduction of free schools has often created new competition, but this competition has related particularly to recruitment from a finite pool of students as well as to students’ socio-economic status, rather than directly to teaching quality and classroom practices.

“When subjected to these new market pressures, neighbouring schools rarely prioritised change or innovation in classroom practices.”

Nearly two-thirds of leaders of neighbouring schools who responded to the study said they were in competition with their nearest free school, including in popularity among parents and recruiting students.

This was particularly felt in areas where free schools were seen to “appeal to aspirational or middle-class families.”

The Department for Education said: “The Children’s Wellbeing Bill will introduce a range of changes to ensure children are safe, healthy, happy and treated fairly.

“This includes measures to require state-funded schools to co-operate with the local authority on school admissions, SEND inclusion, and ensure admissions decisions account for the needs of communities.”