The Government has reportedly wasted nearly £140 million of taxpayers’ money on free schools

The Government has wasted £138.5 million of taxpayers’ money on 62 free schools, university technical colleges (UTCs), or studio schools which have either been closed, partially closed, or failed to open at all, according to The National Union of Teachers.

The findings, based on information from Government websites, company house, and media reports, were announced by the union, the largest in the UK, during its annual conference.

Kevin Courtney, General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said that in the case of the closed UTCs, an average of £10 million was spent on one school, though this figure rose to £15 million in one case for a college in Tottenham.

“These figures make clear that the free school, UTC and studio school programmes were ill-thought policies which, in many cases, resulted in an appalling waste of significant sums of money,” he said.

“That sums of this magnitude have been thrown away at a time when schools across the country are crying out for funding for staff, to provide a broad and balanced curriculum and to ensure essential resources and equipment are available, is criminal. Ministers should apologise to teachers and parents.”

Free, state schools are not ruled by local councils, and have the freedom to control the likes of staff pay and curriculum. Local authorities have been banned from opening new schools that are not free or academies, according to Sky News.

Last week, Education Secretary Justine Greening announced that more than 130 new free schools have been approved by the Government, creating around 69,000 places for pupils, according to Sky News.

124 free schools have opened since 2015, with 373 more due to open.

According to Courtney, the £138.5 could “provide 39% of the funding needed to ensure that no school loses funding in cash terms as a result of the introduction of the Government’s proposed new National Funding Formula.”

It could also provice £6,586 for every school in England, or fund the employment of 3,680 teachers for a year.

“The true cost of these policy failures is even greater,” he went on.

“There is a human cost in the disruption caused to the education of the thousands of those pupils who attended schools which have closed. Usually it is local authorities who have had to pick up the pieces by finding alternative places for the displaced children.”

He said the NUT’s biggest concern is that “the Government is intent on proceeding with these programmes despite growing evidence that the UTC and studio schools programmes cannot attract sufficient numbers of pupils.”

“Furthermore, as the National Audit Office has highlighted, free schools are an expensive alternative to maintained schools when the cost per place is taken into account and they are often failing to provide places in the parts of the country that most need them,” he said.

According to the BBC, The Department for Education said free schools were popular with parents, and had given them more choice in finding “good local schools.”

“The construction costs of a newly-built free school are 29% lower than those built under the previous school building programme,” said an education department spokeswoman, according to the BBC.

“They also operate under a much more robust accountability system than council-run schools, meaning we can take swift action to deal with underperformance.”

However, Courtney said: “The Government has shown that it has completely the wrong priorities for education. The ideological drive to introduce markets and competition by creating yet more types of school has been a disaster pursued without thought for its financial cost or the price paid by those children and their families whom the Government has so badly let down.”

“It is now time to drop these failed programmes and focus on what works.”