Competitive effects of free schools on student outcomes in neighbouring schools

This project provides new evidence on whether free schools impact neighbouring schools, including student attainment and social segregation.

The project runs from February 2021 to April 2025 and is funded by the Nuffield Foundation.

Background
Aims
Methodology
Outputs
Team
Related links

Background

Free schools were introduced as a flagship policy of the new Conservative-led Government in 2010. The policy changed the way state-funded schools opened in England.

It enabled providers to apply to Government for the right and funding to set up and govern a new state school. This included where there was no need for new places.

Independent of local government, free schools have ‘freedoms’ traditional state schools do not. For example, over their curriculum, admissions and staff pay.

The Government argued that free schools would:

be high-quality
offer parents better choices, and
create new competition.

This in turn, the Government argued, would increase pressure for improvement in neighbouring schools, creating a “galvanising effect on the whole school system” (DfE 2010: 57).

There was concern that free schools could have negative impacts. For example, by making neighbouring schools less viable (NAO 2013) or increasing social segregation (NEU 2018).

This project investigates the impacts of free schools on neighbouring schools. We will provide new evidence on whether and how free schools influence local patterns of choice and competition. We will also analyse whether free schools impact student attainment in neighbouring schools and/or local social segregation.

Aims

The project has three main aims:

First, analyse the mechanisms through which free schools may impact their neighbours. We will do this by examining:
- where free schools locate
- free schools’ academic quality
- whether student enrolment in neighbouring schools changes with a free school opening, and
- whether neighbouring schools perceive new competition and respond by taking any new actions.
Second, analyse whether the opening of a free school is associated with any improvement or deterioration in student attainment in neighbouring schools.
Third, analyse whether the opening of a free school is associated with any increase or decrease in social segregation in the surrounding local area.

Methodology

The project focuses on the mainstream free school population as a whole. It looks at the average effects of these free schools on their neighbours. We will also explore potential variations, including different contexts.

The research has a mixed methods design. The combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis provides an appropriate approach to answering our research questions.

Our main approach will be based on matched difference-in-differences and fixed effect panel estimators. We will use the National Pupil Database and link this to other data, including on deprivation and need for places.

We will develop a survey of neighbouring school leaders. Also, we will develop case studies of nine areas in which a free school has opened.

The case studies will produce in-depth insights into:

local school choice
the educational aims of free schools, and
the relations between schools.

Our main analyses will focus on mainstream free schools opened from 2011 to 2020. Covid-19 has influenced this end date, as attainment data was not published from 2020 to 2022. Our survey and case studies will update the free school population to those operating in 2022.

We identify a ‘neighbour’ when a free school opens in the neighbourhood area of a school of the same phase. Moreover, we define a neighbourhood as the travel distance to a school’s ninth-nearest school. We will test the validity of this definition.

Outputs

The project has published a Public Report, The Free Schools Experiment: Analysing the impacts of English free schools on neighbouring schools, on UCL Discovery
UCL news coverage: Social segregation increases where primary free schools open

Team

Principal investigator

Dr Rob Higham