Rachel Wolf: Free schools mark the end of the era when politicians and bureaucrats decide your children's education

Rachel Wolf is Director of the New Schools Network, the national charity which supports Free Schools and helps groups set them up. 

Over the next fortnight a genuinely new policy – one which has faced sustained opposition and attack – is being implemented across the country. For the first time 24 ‘Free Schools’ will open, paving the way for hundreds more in the next few years. This change will radically improve the opportunities for huge numbers of families.

The importance of this, just one year into a new government, should not be underestimated. Anyone interested in British politics will know that change is invariably promised, but rarely delivered. Despite dozens of think tank publications and endless visionary speeches, the real world - a world of compromise – intrudes. Policies get watered down, vested interests take hold, and change vanishes. Not this time.

Inspired by the success of the Charter School movement in the US, Free Schools take power away from politicians and put it in the hands of parents. They offer parents greater choice and give freedom to teachers to run schools as they see fit.

Rachel Wolf: Why it is essential for our children that we follow the model of the American charter schools and Swedish free schools

Rachel Wolf, a former adviser to Michael Gove and the Conservative education team, is founder of the New Schools Network.

This time last year, I went to New York to look at a new type of school which I was told had been getting phenomenal results in the poorest areas – charter schools. I wasn’t disappointed. These schools – often set up by teachers in cheap, even cramped facilities – have been achieving astonishing results with children who had, until then, been completely failed by the system.

Take the KIPP group of 82 schools. Set up by two teachers in their twenties, it is now running in 19 states. I went to one in Harlem – perched on the third floor of an existing public school. You have to go through the state school to get to the charter – and the contrast could not be more obvious. On the ground floor three police officers were ineffectually trying to deal with a 13-year-old girl who stole one of their hats then flung it back at them, swearing at them as she sauntered off. What did they do? Shrug and walk back into their office.

Go up two flights and kids from the same street, with the same background of poverty, will walk up to you and offer to show you around their school. You walk past doors named ‘Yale’ or ‘Harvard’ (after the universities of the teachers – to make it clear that they expect the same of the children). The entire school is a haven of calm and the results follow.

Rachel Wolf, a former adviser to Michael Gove and the Conservative education team, is founder of the New Schools Network.

Rachel Wolf: Why we need new schools - and how we are preparing for their establishment

Rachel Wolf, a former adviser to Michael Gove and the Conservative education team, founded the New Schools Network earlier this month and here she explains its mission. She was also profiled in The Independent last week.

A fortnight ago, we launched a new charity – the New Schools Network – dedicated to helping groups of parents, teachers, charities and other organisations set up new state schools.

This concept of creating new schools has been widely covered in the media (and on ConservativeHome) over the last couple of years, with a particular focus on reforms in Sweden with ‘free schools’ and America with ‘charter schools’. In both countries, parents and other groups have been allowed to set up non-selective state schools, and receive state support for every child in attendance.

British proponents have argued that there will be an enormous response. Sceptics have insisted that no one here will want to start schools. But no one has decided to find out.

It turns out the proponents are right. Since launching the Network we have been overwhelmed by the appetite from parents for the creation of new schools and the desire of providers, teachers and parents themselves to set them up.

We have spent the last few months talking to people across the country, listening to their concerns about their children’s education, and discussing with them how a new system might work best for them.

We have heard from parents who are worried that all the good schools in their local neighbourhood are over-subscribed and that they will be forced to send their child to a school which under-performs.  We have heard from others who are worried that they will have to send their child many miles away to the nearest decent school.  Others have been worried about issues like class sizes or discipline (you can hear a selection of parents’ views on our website here).