I must have it wrong, whilst I understood the schools could be non-profits in a limited sense (though wages of course can be inflated to extract funds) I had it that 3rd party investors were capable of extract a profit from their lending and other involvement.

If there are no profits to make, how do you convince companies to get involved; most companies don't appear to be so altruistic.

I think perhaps I'm under a misapprehension on labelling, that Free Schools are a subset of Academies; see eg http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/may/25/free-schools....