We are uncertain what to make of proposals for free schools in Oxfordshire. The provision of greater opportunity and choice for parents looking for schools for their children must be a good thing, but it should not be at the expense of other schools that are doing well.

Oxfordshire County Council’s thinking that it should be encouraging free schools as a way of dealing with overcrowding and a lack of space in the county’s schools seems to us to be fundamentally flawed.

It must surely be the council’s responsibility to deal with overcrowding and in such a way that it is targeted at those areas where pressure is greatest.

Free schools, by their very nature, will be located where those that are proposing them want them to be and will follow an ethos dictated by the promoters. That may not be to everybody’s taste.

We only know of one free school that is being actively promoted thus far. It is a proposed school in Witney that is promoted by parents who are home-educating their children and which would be run according to the teachings of Austrian educationalist Dr Rudolf Steiner.

While that may offer a choice that is not on offer at the moment, it is not to everybody’s taste, and will not deal with a lack of school places in Wolvercote.

A further concern for us was that our reporter was turned away from what was supposedly a public meeting to discuss this free school. Free, it may be, but clearly not to everyone.

If, as we understand it, these schools are to receive money that would otherwise go to existing state schools, they must pass a test that their establishment is to the demonstrable benefit of education in the local area.