In 2015, pupils at another local school, the Alde Valley academy, now part of Roweâs Waveney Valley academies trust, went public with its concerns about the impact of the new free schools, as its budgets and courses were cut. Even today there are surplus places at Alde Valley and Seckford free schools in Saxmundham and Beccles.
And the record on school standards is mixed. According to the New Schools Network, free schools are more likely to be rated outstanding than other types of school, and when the early free schools GCSE results were published in 2017 Young, who founded West London free school, proclaimed that free schools were âthe most successful education policy of the postwar periodâ.