East Reading free school doesn't get through to next round

I'm not a fan of free schools, but at the moment they are one of the few ways that we can meet the upcoming shortage of secondary school places in east Reading. So I was disappointed to read on Facebook that the recent bid has failed. Text copied and pasted.

"Updated press release, with additional info.

We regret to inform everyone, but East Reading Free School has not been selected for the next stage of the Free school application process. The Department of Education have provided some useful feedback and also had some very positive comments. They were impressed by our ethos and rational and how we would develop students individuality, discover their potential and work individually with pupils to nuture this potential. The areas that they suggested we worked on for future applications include student targets and budgetery issues.

We are obviously disappointed, but would like to thank all those who have supported us so far in getting the application submitted in a short space of time (local parents, councillors of all parties, teachers, community members and GEMS Education Trust).

We have decided that we would like continue developing the application with the view to re-submitting later this year for opening in September 2015.
We would be very interested to hear from anyone who wants to be involved in moving this forward. Please do get in touch.

enquiries@east-reading-school.org.uk

We would like to take this opportunity to wish West Reading Education Network success with progressing their application as they wait for the results for their interview.

East Reading School Trust"