I HAVE been following the events of Bournemouth’s first Free School, Parkfield with total bewilderment.

The school opened initially in the centre of Bournemouth as a temporary measure while it looked for a permanent site.

The governing body promised parents that the permanent site would be within walking distance of the temporary one.

However they have now chosen the site of a disused traffic control centre at Bournemouth Airport, six miles from the centre of Bournemouth.

The road to the school gets gridlocked and some children will need to catch two buses to get there.

The children are taught with a mixture of Montessori, National Curriculum and the International Baccalaureate.

Consequently the teaching is a hybrid of three completely different educational systems.

People setting up these Free Schools can break promises at the drop of the hat as there is zero accountability.

The New School for North Swindon Team initially promised to offer 175 courses to its sixth form students with a bus service to their New College site for any courses that were not available at the north Swindon campus but have since backtracked on this promise.

They can completely change the location of the school after parents have made their preferred school selection.

It seems as though they can locate their schools anywhere they like no matter how unsuitable.

I think the most unbelievable thing is the way in which starry eyed parents are prepared to back such hare-brained schemes and are taken in by a glossy brochure containing perfectly presented models of students with beaming smiles that are pushed onto them from time share sales teams.

Can people honestly believe that allowing teachers without Qualified Teacher Status, that can be employed at a much lower rate of pay, to teach in schools will lead to a raising of standards?

At least under the Labour government education policy was often based on evidence-based research and what was proven to work.

Now we have complete amateurs that know nothing about school education deciding that they will lengthen the school day without one shred of evidence to suggest that lengthening of the day will lead to increased learning.

But it sounds impressive to gullible parents.

So all these schools will eventually become privatised and a few individuals will be making a fortune out of them by cutting back in every area possible to maximise profit.

And then inevitably, some of those privatised schools will go bust and leave the education of thousands of children in limbo as it has in Sweden.

Every time you see a bus go by advertising a school academy, which it will need to do to compete in this free market, you will see a set of expensive musical instruments or PE equipment being forfeited to pay for it.

Andrew Wilkins, Collett Avenue, Swindon