TORY Education Secretary Michael Gove announced the creation of another 38 free schools yesterday to be opened from September 2015. 

The Department for Education boasted that half of the 22,000 places are due to be set up in the most deprived communities in England.

Mr Gove insisted that free schools were giving children from “ordinary backgrounds” the type of education “previously reserved for the rich and the lucky.”

But the National Union of Teachers warnd that pupils and parents were being offered “an untested experiment.”

General secretary Christine Blower said: “The free schools policy is emphatically not about empowering parents, teachers or local communities. 

“The increasing number of free schools that are being set up by large academy chains and existing trusts also gives the lie to the idea that the free school programme is driven by parental demand.

“What we need to see is a return to schools which have local democratic accountability at their heart.”