Phoenix, Christian Family Schools and Manchester grammar among those planning free schools for autumn 2013
An evangelical Christian charity, a band of ex-soldiers and one of the country's top private schools are among groups preparing to submit applications to open new free schools.
Applications opened on Monday for those interested in setting up the schools in autumn 2013. Free schools are state-funded primaries and secondaries started by parents, teachers, charities and private firms.
The policy is one of the coalition's flagship education reforms and is designed to increase competition and standards in the state sector. Critics say there has not been local demand for some of the schools and argue that they are taking funds and pupils from existing schools.
The schools are run as academies and so are accountable to central government rather than their local authority. They have greater freedom to change the timings of the school day, teachers' pay and the subjects they offer to teach.
When applications for the first batch of free schools opened in the summer of 2010, 323 groups put in bids. As a result, 24 free schools opened in September and a further eight were given the go-ahead by ministers to start teaching pupils this September or soon afterwards.
The Department for Education received 281 applications to set up free schools this autumn and has approved 87 of them.
One of the applications for the next round of free schools, to open in September 2013, comes from Christian Family Schools Ltd, a charity that runs a private evangelical school in Sheffield. It wants to set up 10 sites across the city with 96 pupils on each campus. The pupils would be aged between four and 16 and may be taught in mixed-year groups.
Ken Walze, a teacher who would be the curriculum manager of the school if it gets the go-ahead, said he wanted to educate children in "family-sized units". "We believe that schools should make a real difference to family life and we would follow a model that resembled the home," he said.
Not all the teachers at the school would have professionally recognised teaching qualifications, he said. The school would have an evangelical Christian ethos. It would teach the Christian account of creation, but not as a scientific theory, and would teach evolution as a "major scientific theory".
"Pupils will see that God alone is eternal and that all things originate in him," the charity's website states.
Manchester grammar school, one of the country's highest-performing private schools, will also submit a bid to open a free school – the first independent school to do so. It plans to set up a 200-pupil primary in Ancoats, a deprived inner-city neighbourhood of Manchester. The New Islington free school would have as rigorous a selection process as the private school, whose fees are £9,996 a year.
Another application to open a free school will come from a group of ex-servicemen and women. Their school, the Phoenix free school in Oldham, would be the first to be run exclusively by ex-soldiers. Captain AK Burki, who completed a tour of duty in Afghanistan in 2010, has been proposed as the headteacher.
Around 195 families have already said they want to put the school as their first choice for their children, 75 more than the organisers' target. Tom Burkard, a military instructor turned teacher who is behind the application for free school status, said there would be a zero-tolerance policy for poor behaviour. Pupils who chat in lessons would be given an official warning.
"We have got to a point in modern behaviour management where the emphasis is on negotiation between the student and the teacher," he said. "In other words, teachers have to justify their policy and this descends into an argument between the teacher and the pupil."
Another application will be from a secondary school in Plymouth that wants to open a primary on its premises. The Marine Academy Plymouth already has a nursery and classes for 11- to 18-year-olds. Helen Mathieson, the principal, wants the primary school to emphasise science, technology and maths, as well as literacy. Plymouth is among the lowest 10 performing authorities in England, and Mathieson said a new free school would raise aspirations.
Lord Hill, the schools minister, said the number of applications to open free schools had confounded sceptics who assumed no busy parent or teacher would find the time to take part.
He said the free schools would "play an important role in raising education standards in our communities, creating choice for parents, and responding to local need".