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On average, social segregation of students has increased in neighbourhoods where mainstream primary free schools opened, and neighbouring schools have lost students, finds a new report by a team of IOE researchers.

Adapted from Map Graphics via Adobe Stock.

The association between primary free schools and social integration related to ethnicity, in that pupils in some areas were less likely to meet peers from other ethnic backgrounds at school than before the primary free school opened.

In the report, “The Free Schools Experiment; Analysing the impacts of English free schools on neighbouring schools”, published on UCL Discovery and funded by the Nuffield Foundation, the researchers investigated the impact that government-funded free schools had on their neighbouring schools.

Impact on student attainment and enrollment

Free schools, which were introduced in 2010, were intended to be high-quality alternatives, offering parents better choice and increasing attainment by boosting competition between local schools, driving up performance.

The study found the presence of a free school was not associated with any significant change in student attainment in neighbouring primary schools.  

In neighbouring secondary schools, there was on average a modest increase in student attainment in English and Maths after a free school opened. There was also evidence to suggest increased attainment was associated to some extent with how successful neighbouring secondary schools were in attracting advantaged students, including those with higher prior attainment, as neighbouring secondary schools experiencing a substantially more disadvantaged intake after a free school opened did not tend to improve. 

The researchers found free schools were not necessarily ‘high-quality’ during the period analysed. Primary free schools performed worse than a matched sample of similar schools, while secondary free schools performed no better or worse than similar schools. 

Free schools did affect student enrolment in neighbouring schools. Primary schools near a free school experienced an estimated decline in Reception year student numbers, averaging 2.5% across four of the six years analysed. Secondary schools experienced a slightly larger and more consistent decline of 4.5% in Year 7 entry on average across the six years. 

Perceived competition and its effects 

Nearly two-thirds of neighbouring school leaders who responded to the project’s survey reported being in competition with their nearest free school, including over student recruitment and popularity among parents. The highest levels of perceived competition were where there were surplus places or where free schools were seen by their neighbours to appeal to aspirational or middle-class families, including by promoting a fast-paced academic or quasi-private school ethos and by counselling out children who might be harder to provide for. 

Perceived competition was associated with neighbouring schools carrying out new marketing and promotional activities and, to a slightly lesser extent, placing more emphasis on core curriculum subjects, student attainment in exams and Ofsted grades. There was no evidence that perceived competition spurred neighbouring schools to act to directly enhance the quality of their teaching and learning.  

Lead author Dr Rob Higham yesterday said:  

Our findings show that the introduction of free schools has often created new competition, but this competition has related particularly to recruitment from a finite pool of students as well as to students’ socio-economic status, rather than directly to teaching quality and classroom practices. When subjected to these new market pressures, neighbouring schools rarely prioritised change or innovation in classroom practices.” 

A key policy claim was that free schools would push existing schools to find ways to improve student attainment. The findings show a modest increase in attainment in English and Maths in neighbouring secondary, but not primary, schools. In a hypothetical school market of 100 schools, a secondary school with a nearby free school would move up between one or two positions in the league table each year over a four-year period. 

Investigating potential mechanisms underpinning this estimated improvement in secondary schools, the research analysed whether this related to a neighbouring school’s ability to recruit and retain students better positioned to perform well. The research found improvement among secondary neighbouring schools experiencing, after a free school opened, a large increase in the percentage of students who had high prior attainment and were not eligible for Free School Meals or were not White British. These schools already served on average more advantaged intakes prior to a free school opening. By contrast, there was little evidence of improvement among secondary neighbours experiencing, after a free school opened, a large increase in students who had low prior attainment and were either eligible for Free School Meals or were White British. These findings suggest that social selection may have been a mediator of free school competition translating into improvement in secondary neighbouring schools.

The researchers also found that neighbouring schools were more likely to report becoming destabilised if they served a deprived neighbourhood, lost students due to a free school, and were downgraded to below ‘Good’ by Ofsted just before or after a free school opened. This had the potential to start a cycle of decline, by negatively influencing parental choice, further concentrating disadvantaged students into these neighbouring schools and creating the need for cuts to staffing and curriculum, because state funding is closely linked to student numbers. This was clearest in primary schools, with primary free schools often seen to be exacerbating a growing demographic decline in primary pupil numbers. 

Free school enrolment was also associated with increased social segregation in the primary phase. While the trend in England has been toward decreasing segregation, areas in which primary free schools opened saw an opposite trend with modest increases in segregation for students speaking English as an additional language, Black, Asian and ethnic minority students, and White British students. In the secondary phase, increases in segregation were not statistically significant on average. There was however a modest increase in segregation for White British secondary students in areas with lower ethnic diversity and rural areas. 

The researchers attribute this increased social segregation to competition between schools and to different ways in which some free schools have created new options for parents to choose schools that are more homogenous than their local area, including both “self-segregation” by minority ethnic parents and perceived “white flight”. 

Dr Higham yesterday said:  

Free schools were intended to be beacons of good practice, encouraging neighbouring schools to perform better. Our findings provide some support to policy claims that free schools force existing schools to take new actions, but we also found clear disruptions to this. Free school competition spurred neighbours to place more emphasis on improving their appeal and, to a lesser extent, external quality metrics, but typically without a related focus on classroom practices.
Our findings also evidence selective competition where schools have faced stronger incentives to compete over the socio-economic characteristics of students. Not all free schools create such choice and competition, but where they do, this has the potential to increase social divisions in the school system, including the social segregation of students.”   

The team used the National Pupil Database to analyse the average effects of mainstream free schools that opened between 2011 and 2020, on their neighbours. They also surveyed 328 state schools with a mainstream free school nearby and developed case studies of nine local areas in which a free school had opened, with data up to 2022. 

Policy recommendations 

The researchers make recommendations in the report, including changes in: 

• How the Department for Education (DfE) assesses the potential impacts of free schools on neighbouring schools, by including criteria on social segregation and prioritising minimising the risk of destabilising good schools serving disadvantaged communities. 
• How free schools enact their duties on inclusion and community cohesion and how these are monitored. 
• How free schools are opened. The researchers recommend a new approach to allow local authorities to ensure sufficient places and to strategically manage places locally as the pupil population declines in the years ahead.

Related links 

• Read the full report 
• About the project: Competitive effects of free schools on student outcomes in neighbouring schools 
• Dr Rob Higham’s UCL profile 
• Department of Learning and Leadership