An advantage of new schools is that they will have more freedom to innovate with the curriculum. Is there any basic minimum my new school would have to meet?

Conservative policy before the election was that Academies should have the freedom to opt-out of the National Curriculum subject to some requirements to test children. We assume this will be the new Government policy. Free Schools will be able to offer courses such as the IB, the old O Levels and AO Levels (still done in Singapore and elsewhere), Cambridge’s new ‘pre-U’ exam, and other international exams. It will be expected that your curriculum is sufficiently broad to allow children to move to other state schools without too much difficulty. You will also not be accepted if you have an extremist or creationist curriculum. If you were to offer a curriculum very similar to that offered in a leading jurisdiction around the world, such as Singapore or Finland, we assume that would be acceptable to the DfE. The details of precisely how this will work have yet to be announced.