TEACHERS have hit out at Hammersmith and Fulham Council's education policy and urged them to be more wary of impending free schools.
In September, the Department of Education announced three successful free school projects in the borough which had reached the next stage of the application process and invited to submit business cases.
They would be set up by parents, business owners and educational charities and would be free of local authority control.
ARK Conway Academy aim to build their school at the Old Wormholt Library site (pictured), in The Curve, Shepherd's Bush, to be completed by 2013.
Journalist and author Toby Young is the man behind the West London Free School but has remain tight-lipped on possible locations with Pallingswick House, in King Street, a strong contender.
Rivendale Free School, earmarked for Shepherd's Bush, and proposed by local businessman James Woods has also reached the latter application stages.
H&F Council has given its backing to the new schools to help ease the pressure on school places in the borough and give parents more choices but H&F Teachers' Association have hit out at their eager attitude
Dennis Charman, association secretary, said: "Council leaders have clearly given up on any coherent planning for education in H&F.
"This seems to include adopting a complete failure to apply any professional scrutiny to the plans and aspirations of these proposals.
"Nor do we see any information about the effects such plans might have on the funding and stability of neighbouring schools.
"The council should be taking a more critical role in testing what these groups really are capable of offering.
"They hold our local schools to account everyday of the week but when someone pops up with a free school idea they completely lose the plot and fall over themselves to cheer them on from the sidelines."
But H&F Council has defended its education policy and insists they are not losing focus on providing a top-notch education for all its residents.
Councillor Helen Binmore, H&F Council cabinet member for children's services, said: "We are supportive of all of our schools, but also believe that it it part of our role to increase choice, both in the range and type of schools on offer.
"We will continue to work with our current diverse portfolio of community, voluntary aided, church schools and academies, and, as ever, are committed to ensuring that any school, whether new or otherwise, provide a high quality education.
"The free-school proposals themselves, as they proceed to business case, will ultimately go to the Secretary of State for approval, not the council, but we are required to respond to the consultation that takes place for each free school.
"We will study each proposal carefully and our scrutiny of these proposals will be no less rigorous for these new free schools than for our established family of schools."
