Nursery World - Failing Montessori free school to close

One of the first free schools to open is to have its funding withdrawn by the Department for Education and will close next year.

The Discovery New School in Crawley, West Sussex, was the first state-funded primary to adopt a whole-school Montessori approach.

It is set to close at the end of the spring term next year.

The school had been placed in special measures following a grading of inadequate for overall effectiveness, leadership and management, the quality of teaching and the achievement of pupils.

Schools minister Lord Nash made the announcement in a letter to the school’s chair of governors.

It said that following a subsequent visit last month, ‘Ofsted found that no progress in the quality of teaching and learning had been made since the original special measures judgement in May. None of the school’s teachers were delivering good lessons and all were still consistently inadequate or required improvement.’

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