18 new free schools are being approved by UK PM David Cameron on Wednesday, including a free school based on the methods of teaching in Ancient Greece. The Gipsy Hill secondary school in South London will base its lessons around the “classical trivium” with logic, rhetoric and grammar being fundamental to the learning process.

Pupils will be given the basic building blocks for critical thought with four years of “grammar” linking linguistic skill to growing intellect for starters. Later, at the “logic stage” they will ask “why?” and grow through analytical thinking. Finally, they will reach the “rhetoric stage” to help develop originality, clarity and force.

The Gipsy Hill federation has five primary schools in Lambeth, south London. The 1,600 secondary school is due to open in September 2017.

Teaching unions are opposed to the government’s decision to start a new wave of free schools and Cameron’s government has been accused by the Teachers National Union General Secretary Christine Blower of playing “politics with schools in pursuit of its own ideological ends.”