West London Free School opened by Boris

Pic taken from The Guardian tinyurl.com/3st6kun

Boris Johnson opened the West London Free School today and The Guardian has a photo diary of the event with some pretty darned good images here. I pinched the one above to give you a flavour! I'm grateful to the School for the invite to the launch but was unable to make it.

According to the Press Association, who very much were at the launch, the Mayor, who donned a WLFS tie himself, paid tribute to the School:

"It's the achievement of loads of parents and governors here, who have decided to take up the Government's offer to fund a new type of school.

"And this is isn't getting back to the old boring row about, do you have a comprehensive system, or do you have grammar schools?

"This is saying if you can give individual parents and teachers the power to set their own curriculum, their own ethos, and allowing for competition, then you can achieve great results.

"I hope very much that this school will be a success and also that it's imitated across London."

Critics of course remain concerned that the School will prove socially divisive as parents seek to leave the existing schools or become angry when they find that a lot of the children will not be from the Borough at all - thus blocking local children completely from taking part. But its an experiment that is at the forefront of the Governments education policy and with a Council like H&F keen to be at the forefront of Tory policies you can expect more of this to come.