Tomb Raider creator to open 2 new free tech schools

Games Workshop co-founder Ian Livingstone will open two new free schools aimed at teaching students all about the latest in innovative technology and creative thinking. The man responsible for launching games like Lara Croft and Dungeons and Dragons is slated to open the schools in London and Bournemouth.

Livingstone's new schools are slated to offer students technology immersive opportunities, including setting up a Dragon's Den style competition to encourage students to collaborate and create mock startups at school.

Encouraging other tech entrepreneurs to join him in the education bandwagon, Livingstone said: "The arts and sciences should no longer be a question of either or — and to further this I'm delighted to be opening two free schools to embed digital creativity in future generations of our society. It is the combination of computer programming skills and creativity by which today's world-changing companies are built," the Guardian reported.

The Livingstone Academies, in collaboration with the Aspirations Academies Trust, will be open to 3,000 students, offering courses in science, maths, engineering, technology and arts. The schools will be located in Tower Hamlets in east London and in Bournemouth.

The gaming titan and children's book author has applied to the UK government for 22 such new schools across the country. The application is still pending approval by the Department for Education (DfE), which has tasked itself with the challenging target of opening 500 additional free schools across Britain before the current parliament's tenure is completed. As many as 380 free schools are already up and running.

In efforts to accelerate the process, the government has said that it intends to open a new property department, which will be responsible in overseeing and securing new properties for building the free schools. The DfE also said that it will set up an advisory committee to step up the process of finding and obtaining properties and sites.