Threat to small Village Schools from proposal for Free School

A plan to open a Free school for 600 pupils (4-16 year olds) is being submitted to the Government.  It’s likely to be in the Stroud/Nailsworth area - if the plan is accepted, it will start to take primary school children in September 2015.
Normally a new school is set up because more places are needed. But the opposite is true here: local schools have too many places. The number of school age children over the next 5 years is low (because birth rates go up and down) - with 600 surplus places in Stroud area. If 600 children leave existing schools and go to the Free School, we’ll have 1,200 surplus places. Some schools will have so few pupils left they won’t be financially viable.
A Free School is supposed to be set up if local people say it’s wanted and needed to improve education. There’s no evidence of a need to improve performance of local schools & little evidence that local people really want or need this school.
Free schools take money and pupils from existing schools and they are not democratically accountable. 
- The Free School will be funded by taxpayers. Money is tight - so why spend millions on a Free School that’s not needed? (and parental satisfaction with local schools is high - why set up another?)
- Free Schools don’t have to use qualified teachers or meet the same standards and test results as ordinary schools.  Will this put pupil achievements at risk? Should all schools meet certain standards?
- Stroud doesn’t need extra school places - we have 600 unfilled school places over 5 years.  There IS a shortage of school places in Gloucester and Cheltenham - setting up a school there makes more sense.
- 3 or 4 schools could close if the Free School opens, including village schools. Smaller schools play an important role in rural communities - closure would be devastating.
- A local secondary school is likely to close too. (And the Free School is a Steiner school, so if it takes pupils from Wynstones, that’s also at risk).
- Steiner Education is already available in this area through the private sector - is it right to use taxpayers’ money to create this free school?

If you share my concerns 
Please write with your concerns to Neil Carmichael MP and to Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education (by 31st March 2014) where the decision to give the new Free School a licence will be made.  You could also ask Mr Carmichael for an appointment to discuss the plans.
michael.gove.mp@parliament.uk  neil.carmichael.mp@parliament.uk