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Guidance

Establishing a new academy: free school presumption

The process for establishing new schools before 1 September 2026 through the free school presumption route, and the qualities school proposers must demonstrate.

Updates to this page

From:
Department for Education
Published:
23 July 2015
Last updated:
3 September 2026
Show all updates

  1. Updated to reflect that this guidance is relevant only to proposals published before 1 September 2026.

  2. Updated to give notice that this guidance will be withdrawn on 1 September 2026.

  3. Updated the 'Free schools presumption guidance' to reflect the emphasis placed on the resilience of new schools during the approval process.

  4. Replaced the 'Free school presumption guidance' and Annexes A, B, C and D with updated versions.

  5. Updated the free school presumption guidance to reflect the expectation that local authorities should involve the department in the assessment process and added a section on community cohesion. Added annex D covering pre-opening expectations.

  6. Updated 'Academy and free school presumption: guidelines' document.

  7. Updated guidance and all annex documents as of May 2018.

  8. Updated advice and added local authority specification form, proposer application form and model criteria for new schools.

  9. First published.

Applies to England

Documents

Free school presumption guidance

PDF, 268 KB, 22 pages

Annex A: model specification template for local authorities (Word)

MS Word Document, 70.2 KB

Annex A: model specification template for local authorities (ODT)

ODT, 51.8 KB

This file is in an OpenDocument format

Annex B: model application form for proposers (Word)

MS Word Document, 76.5 KB

Annex B: model application form for proposers (ODT)

ODT, 44.6 KB

This file is in an OpenDocument format

Annex C: model criteria for local authorities and proposers

PDF, 246 KB, 13 pages

Annex D: pre-opening expectations

PDF, 212 KB, 9 pages

Details

This guidance describes the process for establishing new academies (free schools) under the ‘free school presumption’ and is relevant only to proposals published before 1 September 2026.

From 1 September 2026, local authorities, proposers and decision-makers should follow the opening new schools guidance.

This guidance is for:

  • local authorities
  • academy trusts

It describes the process for establishing new academies (free schools) under the ‘free school presumption’. You should read it in conjunction with the annex documents on this page.

Single or multi-academy trusts establishing new academies and free schools should refer to the model academy and free school funding agreements.

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