TORY plans for Britain’s education system will waste taxpayers’ money and leave Britain’s schools even more fragmented, teaching unions warned yesterday as the government confirmed plans to open 500 more free schools.

PM David Cameron also promised to “crack down on coasting schools and force them to accept new leadership” — meaning they would be forced to become academies.

National Union of Teachers general secretary Christine Blower said: “More testing, more free schools, more forced academies and more pressure — all with less money in education and less money in the other services that support children. This is not the strategy that will give all children in this country excellent outcomes.”

And Association of Teachers and Lecturers leader Mary Bousted warned there was a “looming crisis of recruitment and retention of school leaders whose jobs are coming to be as insecure as football managers.”