Free schools for children with complex problems gain approval

The schools are included in a batch of 102 new free schools, creating 50,000 new pupil places, to have their applications to open in 2014 granted by Education Secretary Michael Gove today.

Of the newly approved schools, the Family School in London sounds particularly innovative, catering for children aged five to 14 and suffering from complex psychological, family and mental health problems. It aims to combine teaching with up-to-date Child and Adolescent Mental Health (CAMHS) practice “to ease behavioural and mental health health-related blocks to learning”.

The Department for Education said a key feature of the programme “will be that children will remain pupils, in a school context that is non-stigmatising. Treatments, whether individual, family or multi-family in nature, will for the most part be delivered either in the Family School itself or in the mainstream school”.

Multi-family groups is a relatively new technique used in CAMHS that involves families working together with therapists in an education setting to address their children’s mental health problems. It has been shown to help children improve behaviour, concentration and academic achievement in school.

In addition, the National Autistic Society (NAS) intends to open two free schools in Lambeth, south London and Cheshire East for children and young people aged four to 19 with an autistic spectrum disorder.

The DfE says the schools will focus on core subjects – English, maths, science and ICT – and will offer GCSEs and A-levels, as well as AQA and Asdan functional skills qualifications. Pupils will also be taught life skills and social communication.

NAS is set to open its first free school in Reading in September.

A flagship and highly controversial government initiative, free schools are state-funded but independent of local authority control. By September 2013, there will be 190 running in England, offering 130,000 pupil places.

Responding to criticism of the policy that free schools have tended to be set up in middle-class areas, the DfE says that many of the new batch of schools will be based in areas of deprivation or where there is a shortage of school places. It adds that 24 of the 102 newly approved schools will serve the most vulnerable children and young people, of which eight will be special schools.

Making the announcement, Gove said: “Free schools are extremely popular with parents and are delivering strong discipline and teaching excellence across the country.”