THE abrupt demise of Durham Free School, the closure of which was announced by Education Secretary Nicky Morgan after a damning Ofsted report, will come as no surprise to critics of the free school movement.

The brainchild of former Education Secretary, Michael Gove, and inspired by experimental schools in Sweden and the United States, free schools were part of the Coalition Governments Big Society initiative.

Influenced by libertarianism, the idea was to allow parents, teachers, charities, businesses and religious groups to set up their own schools.

The vision was that free schools would be an independent but state-funded school which was open to all abilities.

Crucially, like mainstream academy schools, the new free schools would not be controlled by their local educational authority.

But free schools would continue to be subject to the same schools admissions code as all other state-funded schools.

Free schools are governed by non-profit charitable trusts that sign funding agreements with the Education Secretary.

In order to set up a free school, founding groups must submit detailed applications to the Department of Education.

While there are additional start-up funds available to new free schools, mainstream funding is on the same basis as other state schools.

The new model has spread slowly around the country and the North-East still only has a handful of examples.

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What are free schools? Does the failure of Durham Free School indicate the model is flawed?