Supporters welcome free school (From Oxford Mail)

Bless.

Good news, now the County doesn't need to expand the other east Oxford schools. A sixty intake will make this a big school.

I'm sure they'll fit nice and snug into the former club, in five years that would be 300 kids on that site.

There has always been choice between State and Private schools, but at an heavy financial cost to those Parents who chose Private edcation for their children. Now the Free Schools are starting to offer a third way, as an alternative where Parents are unhappy and not satisfied with what monolithic State schools provide, and how they are run. Often, State schols are too-big, too-unweildly, and impersonal with children treated more like something on a factory conveyor belt - put into the State system at one end, and dumped-out at the other with either no meaningful experience of life or acceptable academic qualification. Even sport and physical education provision suffered under successive governments - including the 13 years when Labour had its greasy hands on the tiller! Now, for at least some Parents and their children, the so-called 'Free Schools' offer hope and a positive way forward - not for Parents who are elitist, but for people who are desperate to gain a better, more fair education and the hope of a future for their children, instead of the same old promises that a different political party in national government or running the local authority would do things differently ..... when they never have! Labour gave £billions to save the 'b........ankers' but never effectively resolved the growing issues in education provision. Now, maybe Free Schools will help address those issues, and the very real fears which many Parents have about the creaking, overloaded State system.

Myron, if as you say this school will be so good, and state schools are so bad, how will the new school choose which 60 kids from the hundreds that now go to state schools and will now apply for this one? It is not the schools that are bad but the kids and more importantly their parents. Everybody bangs on about how good Cherwell is, but if you were to move Cherwell to The Oxford Spires site lock stock and barrel and Oxford Spires to Marston Ferry Road, then Cherwell would be the worst school in Oxford, and Spires the best, it is about location and not the school or teachers.

Often, it is size that is the problem - same with the NHS, where smaller hospitals are closed for 'cost-effectiveness' and 'greater efficiency' and we end up with over-bloated places like the JR. The same with schools, where the similar management ideals have been applied - regardless of whether huge schools actually work. Parents who care about their children's education are not 'wrong' to want to place them into State or other schools with a good reputation. The irony is that in France - which generally has well-run and funded State schools - Parents only resort to private schools where there is need for special provision or care. Fact is that State education in the UK - especially under successive Labour governments - has lacked the sort of funding needed to maintain, develop and improve standards where costs (like with the NHS) have soared over recent decades - and reducing everything to the 'lowest common denominator' to tick as many 'boxes' as possible, simply hasn't worked and isn't working. Otherwise, you wouldn't now be getting the growth of interest in Free or Academy schooling. Might I also add that standards in teaching have also suffered - not simply because of huge impersonal schools, but also the fact that to many, teaching became an 'unemployment option' after university, rather than a dedicated career choice, or vocation. Good teachers have always been 'like hen's teeth' and they are the one's who help make the difference between schools which Parents want to send their children to, and those which Parents try to avoid - even if it means moving home to a different area. Blindly accepting bad State education provision as some weird sort of 'inverted snobbery' is not a viable option for those Parents who care about their children's future, and also the future of their country.

Myron - you certainly make a few choice comments:

"Blindly accepting bad State education" - who is blindly accepting this?

"over-bloated places like the JR." - this is one of the best hospitals in the UK (if not the world).

"but also the fact that to many, teaching became an 'unemployment option' after university, rather than a dedicated career choice, or vocation." - the majority of teachers in the UK work extremely hard and longer hours than many other better paid workers. They put their soul into educating and caring for their pupils.

"including the 13 years when Labour had its greasy hands on the tiller!" - I take it you're a Daily Mail reader?

I could go on but ........

Myron: you seem to be supporting larger units in education, not smaller. Until the 2010 Education Act, local authorities, voted in by local people, were able to: plan where school places were needed; intervene when things go wrong; have representatives of major political parties on governing bodies, together with parents and other members of the community; provide technical support such as insurance, personnel services, building services, etc.

Now, for "free" schools the support has gone and the control is centralised in one person: Mr Gove. If that had been a Labour move, presumably you would have called it totalitarianism.

The cost of this vanity project is vast. Hence, Mr Gove's overspend of £1 billion on the academies and "free" school programme - taken from the rest of the education budget. Now he is being given even more money at the cost of all the other things which are being cut. In my area that includes: home helps, playleaders, youth clubs, meals on wheels and much, much more.

Do you really think that this is the right time for this sort of expenditure? Why not give back the power to plan to the local authority - that is REAL localism.