Free schools come under fire for 'poor management'
The flagship free schools policy has been riddled with financial mismanagement and poor management, relying on whistleblowers to raise concerns, according to the Public Accounts Committee.
'Less than half' of free schools submitted accounts
Under half of the UK's new free schools have submitted their accounts for the tax year 2011/12 to the Education Funding Agency (EFA), an influential group of MPs has warned.
The Public Accounts Committee was particularly critical of the following:
- Al-Madinah School in Derby.
- Discovery New School in Crawley, West Sussex, which was closed down last month.
- Kings Science Academy in Bradford.
- They said that these cases suggest that the Department for Education (DfE) and EFA's processes for overseeing free schools "are not yet working effectively to ensure that public money is used for the proper purpose".
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