Highgate School to provide teaching at new free sixth form

Highgate School, one of the UK's leading independent schools, will become part of a consortium of top private schools providing tuition at a new sixth form college in Newham, East London. The London Academy of Excellence, opening in September 2012, will be established under the government's Free School initiative and eventually offer places to 400 A-level students.

A total of eleven independent schools based in the South-East of England, led by Brighton College, will be offering expertise and staff time. Highgate will be providing tuition in mathematics, one of the twelve subjects that will be offered in the London Academy of Excellence's "hard" curriculum alongside English, science subjects and history.

Government ministers, including Prime Minister David Cameron, called on independent school leaders to help "tear down the apartheid" between fee-paying and state sector schools by strating and sponsoring Academies. Free Schools are free from local authority control and can set their own curriculum, admissions criteria and length of school day. The London Academy of Excellence is expected to have a 9am-5pm school day and encourage work in the community as well as rigorous study.

The Free Schools programme is not without its critics - although free from local government control the schools are nevertheless taxpayer funded, and some heads fear the new establishments will divert money and staff resources from existing schools and lead to community segregation. Teaching union the NASUWT has called free schools a "policy for the pushy and priveleged", and questioned the long teaching days and terms at establishments opened this year.

Some private schools have applied to become free schools - while retaining their admissions criteria - effectively becoming independent schools paid for by the public while benefitting only a select few. The free school system is based on a Swedish model; some commentators have pointed out that standards in literacy and numeracy have fallen in Sweden since their introduction, whereas in more inclusive school systems standards across all subjects are improving. Liberal Democrats in government favour a "pupil premium" to ensure material resources for all schools, especially benefitting those in historical need.

Highgate School staff's wealth of subject knoweldge and practical teaching experience will no doubt be valuable to the young people of Newham who might not otherwise have had the chance to experience it. But there will certainly remain questions next year about whether free schools are the best way to break down the "apartheid" currently identified in UK education.