ABSTRACT
The contemporary development of Academies and Free Schools is well known; the latter being a creation of the Academies Act 2010, which were a logical extension of the Academies created by the Education Act 2002, which were a development of City Academies created by the Learning & Skills Act 2000, which were based on the City Technology Colleges created by the Education Act 1996 and contiguous with Voluntary Aided and Grant Maintained schools – the first state schools to be free from local authority (LA/LEA) control by virtue of the Education Reform Act 1988. Less well known is the history of free schools which preceded this, in particular from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries; from the ‘free grammar schools’ founded during the reign of Edward VI to the Clarendon Report of 1864, which examined the governance structure, curricular obligations and local accountabilities of public schools. Drawing on the debates between Arthur Leach and Benjamin Hall Kennedy, the concept and meaning of a free school – Libera Schola – is examined in terms of (1) free tuition (for the poor); and (2) those free by Charter from all ecclesial and municipal jurisdiction.
