Not that this is unexpected.

Since Ms Morgan’s predecessor as education secretary Michael Gove blurted out that he had “no ideological objection” to state schools run for private profit, plans to privatise schools by stealth have been the worst kept secret in politics.

They lie at the heart of both the Blairite academies drive first launched by the Labour government and of the “free schools” promoted by the Con-Dem coalition, which remove local accountability by taking responsibility for schools away from elected councils.

They are also behind the government’s decision last year to scrap national agreements on teachers’ pay and tell each individual school to set its own pay policy.

Combined with giving free schools the licence to employ unqualified teachers, this is a crucial pre-privatisation sweetener for businesses.

If schools are to be run for profit then privateers want the freedom to cut costs by attacking pay and getting rid of better-qualified — and therefore more expensive — staff.

Successive governments’ fixation with subjecting pupils to an ever-increasing array of standardised tests reflect the growing commodification of education in England and Wales.

Instead of a commitment to provide a comprehensive education for every child we have a crude system for measuring a school’s “output” — which is essential if for-profit schools are to compete for custom.

This is the cause of the recent scandal showing massively undersubscribed free schools are being set up in areas with plenty of school places, while other areas face a chronic lack of places and schools pushed way beyond capacity.

Setting up free schools in places which don’t need them is no problem for the Conservatives, since it paves the way for competition.

Schools, and even individual teachers within schools, will vie to provide the best service to get the biggest rewards. However, there is no evidence that for-profit schools will improve education.

Tory ministers and their media outriders like to point to private schools and claim they are more successful than state schools.

But the domination of the British Establishment by the privately educated has more to do with old boys’ networks and privilege than with the quality of education provided.

In any case the likes of Eton and Harrow, which can charge parents over £30,000 a year per pupil, are obviously going to command resources greater than those of ordinary schools.

Bringing profit into the state sector will not mean every child gets access to the opportunities old Etonians enjoy. It’s been tried before — most notably in Chile, where it was introduced during the brutal Pinochet years.

As Rick Muir of the Institute for Public Policy Research notes in his report Not for Profit: The Role of the Private Sector in England’s Schools, for-profit schools in Chile performed worse than both not-for-profit religious schools and schools run by local authorities.

For-profit schools operated at a lower cost — because of “their ability to pay lower salaries and hire less-qualified teachers,” he found.

“This may be why these schools are underperforming,” he added.

It’s an ominous warning of what to expect if the Tories get their way on this.

As for the Lib Dems’ pledge that “no government with Liberal Democrats in it will be handing over our schools to private companies,” we’ve been here before.

Neither coalition party can be trusted with our children’s education.