LONDON, June 18 (Reuters) - Parents in England will be able to set up schools in homes and shops with taxpayers' money after Britain's coalition government promised on Friday to relax planning laws to boost competition in the education system.
Education Secretary Michael Gove said the scheme — a flagship policy of the coalition’s Conservative party — will improve standards and hoped the first would open by Sept. 2011.
Groups wanting to create what Gove has dubbed "free schools", based on similar models in Sweden and the United States, can apply online with the Department for Education.
The schools will be funded by the state but will be run by parents, teachers or charities.
Gove said around 700 groups had already expressed interest in setting up new schools in their areas.
The programme is part of an overhaul of education policy ushered in by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition following the Labour government’s election defeat in May.
Gove wants to give state-funded schools more freedom to follow Britain’s highly-rated but expensive independent school sector, which educates around seven percent of pupils.
He had invited the top-ranked state schools to opt out from local authority control, and said 70 percent of these were interested in becoming independent "academies".
Critics fear this will create a two-tier education system favouring ambitious middle-class families, leaving behind unpopular schools in deprived areas.
Gove plans to counter these concerns by offering schools a "pupil premium" of extra cash for every poor child admitted, although studies have questioned whether there will be sufficient funding to have a significant impact.
MORE WITH LESS
He said the experience of Sweden and the United States was that giving schools greater freedom, cutting planning bureaucracy and creating competition all lead to lower costs, meaning more could be done with the same level of funding.
"I am shameless in wanting to borrow all those ideas that have worked in other countries that will help drive up the quality of state education," Gove said.
Britain’s government has pledged to cut a record budget deficit of 11 percent of national output quickly, meaning funding to most departments could fall drastically over the coming years.
The coalition has tried to massage those fears with a vision of a "big" society where the state does less and spends less and communities take more control of their lives.
However, public sector unions are still concerned that public services such as education will deteriorate in quality and thousands of jobs in teaching could be at risk.
Under the plan, interested parents will have to detail their proposed school’s objectives, show evidence of demand, describe the teaching methods to be used and suggest possible sites.
Gove said the support of at least 40 to 50 parents would be needed for a new primary school, with more for a secondary.
Rachel Wolf of the New Schools Network, a charity coordinating interest in the "free schools" programme, said around half the 700 inquiries had come from teachers.
"The vast majority of those want to go into deprived areas and a lot have been inspired by what they have seen in the United States … schools which have massively improved achievement, attainment and aspiration in very poor areas."
