MICHAEL GOVE’S free market schools experiment was singled out yesterday as the cause for a curriculum of intolerance that was fed to children at Birmingham academies. 

But former Met police counter-terrorism head Peter Clarke dismissed claims of a “Trojan horse” takeover of Birmingham schools by extremists. 

In a report released yesterday he was clear that he “neither specifically looked for, nor found, evidence of terrorism, radicalisation or violent extremism.”

However, he added: “There has been co-ordinated, deliberate and sustained action, carried out by a number of associated individuals, to introduce an intolerant and aggressive Islamic ethos into a few schools in Birmingham.”

And he criticised Birmingham Council for failing to support head teachers to face down extremists even though four of the five schools placed under special measures are academies not under local authority control.

Mr Clarke urged the government to review how schools can convert to academy status in light of the scandal. 

Shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt said the report showed Mr Gove’s school privatisation policies had “fomented the crisis in Birmingham.”

The teaching of “extremist views” was made possible by ripping schools from council scrutiny.

He told Parliament: “The free market model of schooling, pioneered by her predecessor, has been sunk by the events in Birmingham.

“The truth is, the chaotic, deregulated, fragmented education policy this government has pursued has increased the risks of radicalisation in English schools.”

The Labour MP stopped short of calling for schools to be taken back into council control — asking only that each city has a schools commissioner. 

New Education Secretary Nicky Morgan confirmed among a raft of measures that a commissioner would be dispatched to run Birmingham’s schools. 

Challenged to apologise on behalf of Mr Gove, Mr Morgan insisted that the “expansion of the academy programme has been one of the great success stories of this government.

“The actions of a small number of individuals will not divert us from this path,” she vowed. 

National Union of Teachers deputy general secretary Kevin Courtney said the lack of oversight “was always going to lead to problems and many have already come to light. 

“The solution would be to return state schools to the oversight of the local authority and stop the process altogether.”