ABSTRACT
Local authorities have been allowed to establish new schools through the presumption route, meaning they have to identify the need for a new school to create additional places. The New Schools Network, the organisation set up by the government to oversee the expansion of the Free Schools programme and which currently has more than 300 schools in the pipeline, is targeting the creation of new schools in areas of educational underperformance. Bure Park Primary School sprang up on a patch of former farmland in the year 2000. Because Bure Park was being built to serve a housing estate with a specific catchment area there were, at least, no objections to it from other schools in the town. In the absence of any other meeting place on the estate, the school became a focal point where parents and toddlers could gather and get to know their new neighbours.
