Written question asked by Chris Leslie (Labour) on Tuesday, 8 November 2011, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Monday, 14 November 2011. It was answered by Nick Gibb (Conservative) on Thursday, 24 November 2011 on behalf of the Department for Education.

New Schools Network: Finance

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Education (1) for how long he intends to continue funding work being undertaken by the New Schools Network;

Answer: [holding answer 14 November 2011]: Officials assessed both the performance and value for money of the New Schools Network's (NSN) work throughout the original grant period. NSN was found to have played a major role in assisting groups to submit quality applications to the Department; for example of the 24 Free Schools that opened this year, 22 had received advice and guidance from NSN. In the 2012 mainstream application process NSN supported over 80% of those approved by the Secretary of State for Education, my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), to move to the pre-opening phase of development.These figures, supplemented by feedback from groups who contacted NSN for help, clearly demonstrate the value of the support to groups in developing their Free School applications. That is why we assessed that there was an ongoing need for an organisation to provide similar pre-application support and ran an open competition to offer a grant for these services from 1 November 2011 to 31 March 2013 (with a possible one-year extension). We have no plans to publish any specific information relating to these assessments.

Secondary information