Route 39 Academy in Devon was placed in special measures by Ofsted in July last year, after it emerged that the school had decided not to enter any Year 11 pupils for GCSEs. 

Last month, the school’s governors resigned, claiming that they’d been bullied by Ofsted. Below, one of the former governors, Ann Ward, offers her point of view.

This story goes right to the heart of Conservative education strategy - a free school policy that was never fit for purpose.

We started out in 2012 as the darlings of then education secretary Michael Gove’s revolutionary ambitions, as well as prime minister David Cameron’s “Big Society” of parent-led, grassroots community volunteers who put lives on hold to challenge the status quo. However, nobody in Westminster had considered how this would work in practice.

We had the support of the county council but, stripped of its influence, it was an ineffective ally.

We were lambasted for being representatives of a meddling, London-centric government. This was not the case. The Department for Education provided us with a “New Schools Network” of inexperienced Oxbridge just-graduates, six hours’ drive away. Visits from the DfE were irregular and often lacked follow-up. From the outset, we were on our own.

We have spent five years squeezed into temporary cabins, with intermittent phone and internet, exposed to the mud and gales in a remote area of North Devon that a few people visit on holiday and no one really cares about. In an atmosphere of community warfare, we struggled to recruit and form partnerships. We became a refuge for desperate and disenfranchised students.

These students added to our mountain of challenges, but also became our biggest source of pride. Our vision centred on prioritising relationships to develop confidence. Our parent surveys showed that this was being achieved. Slowly, by the sheer hard slog of a committed team, the school was settling into its systems and taking shape. The certainty of a permanent home was on the horizon and we saw progress.

Going rogue

Then we made a fatal error: we went rogue. We delayed the GCSEs of 11 students to improve their chances. We considered this to be the essence of the free school policy: being empowered to make decisions in our students’ interests. But, of course, that was never Gove’s intention. He used free schools to break up the existing power bases. He then imposed from the centre a far more prescriptive, backward-looking curriculum and then established academy chains to gobble up the spoils.

“Free” has nothing to do with this policy. Innovators and independent thinkers are definitely not welcome. Ultimately, the costs of the policy have added to the austerity burden that is affecting British politics so profoundly.

We know that many of our fellow educators will crow at our demise and cheer as another Tory flagship goes down. What they don’t realise is that we were never Gove’s lackeys. We were flying the flag for our marginalised coastal community, for the reasons they became educators in the first place, and for the professional freedoms they all long for, and which are slipping further and further away.

Anna Ward is a former governor and current trustee of Route 39 Academy, North Devon

See this week’s Tes magazine for more on parent-led free schools and why the education sector’s ‘Big Society’ revolution has petered out