Fifteen years of free schools – and better outcomes for pupils?

This blog post was first published in tes on Monday 14 July 2025.

Free schools have been around for a while. Since 2010 in fact, when the Coalition Government’s all-ability ‘free schools’ policy was launched in a bid to introduce competition and innovation into the school system. But how successful have free schools been in supporting pupil outcomes? 

NFER, in partnership with Manchester Metropolitan University, funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), set out to answer this question. This was done by undertaking the most rigorous research to date into the effects of secondary free schools on pupil outcomes. 

Our research is timely as the policy of opening more free schools is currently on ice. In October 2024 the current Government announced it would be pausing progress on any mainstream free schools which have been approved and not yet opened. 

The results of our analysis paint a broadly positive picture for pupils enrolled in secondary free schools in England 

Using data for all pupils in England entering Year 7 from September 2011 onwards, we compared free school pupils with their siblings who enrolled in secondary school prior to the free school opening, benchmarked against sibling pairs where neither sibling attended a free school. Doing this enabled us to isolate the impact of attending a free school from other background factors (e.g. parental education). We estimated a large positive effect on GCSE outcomes for pupils enrolled at a secondary free school. This was equivalent to an average pupil’s likelihood of being awarded five GCSEs graded 9-4/A*-C (including English and Maths) increasing from 56.5 per cent to 61.1 per cent.

Our analysis also estimated the absence rate of pupils enrolled at a free school during Key Stage 4. Attending a free school is associated with an average pupil’s absence rate falling from 7.2 per cent to 6.5 per cent. This finding was similar, but slightly smaller, for Key Stage 3 pupils.

Our estimates for outcomes beyond secondary school also show that free schools have longer term impacts: pupils enrolled in free schools were more likely to take one or more A-levels, and more likely to enrol at a university. 

Effects for disadvantaged pupils are similar

While the priorities of the programme evolved over time, free schools were proposed by some as a means of increasing educational performance in areas of economic disadvantage. 

We did a separate analysis of outcomes for pupils enrolled at free schools and living in the most deprived areas. While there were generally positive findings, similar to those for all pupils enrolled in free schools in any area, the findings for disadvantaged pupils are not markedly different. In other words, free school pupils living in disadvantaged areas did no better than free school pupils living in all areas. But effects on pupils in the local area are less clear.

We also ran a separate analysis to investigate the effect of secondary free schools being opened on all pupils living in their catchment area, including on pupils who attended other types of school in the same area. This analysis was therefore broader, looking at effects of free schools on their local areas. We analysed data separately for each year of free school openings, and although we found some significant positive results, results overall were not conclusive.

So have secondary free schools been worth the investment?

Together our findings paint a broadly positive picture of the impact which secondary free schools have had on pupil outcomes. But the schools set up by the free schools programme were diverse. It is unclear what made these schools successful; for example while our results could be explained by innovative practice in some free schools, they could equally be explained by the fact that many free schools have had smaller class sizes as they became established. 

Further research is therefore needed to understand what it is about secondary free schools that has been particularly effective. This would inform whether the significant investment involved in opening these new schools is justified and if the policy of opening new free schools should be continued.