I would not naturally sympathise with a Christian school, still less with a free school set up under Michael Gove. Yet I feel concern about what is happening to Durham Free School, opened in September 2013 but due to close at Easter after a bad report from the Ofsted inspectors. According to Ofsted, “standards are low and [pupil] progress” is inadequate”. Moreover, “some students hold discriminatory views of other people who have different faiths, values or beliefs”.
Ofsted recommended that the school be put in special measures, as it did at another Christian free school, Grindon Hall in Sunderland. But Durham Free must close because Nicky Morgan, Gove’s successor at the education department, has announced she will stop its funding. She can do this without consulting parents or other local people, without reference to parliament and without allowing a right of appeal.
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