Full credit to Mark Perry, head of St Peter’s CofE School in Exeter, for encouraging debate about creationism and evolution in schools (“Gove banishes creationist groups from free schools”, 20 May). It is fascinating that evangelical humanists are so shrill in their opposition to a creator God while happy for all sorts of other nonsense to be taught.

It is no more absurd to believe in creation(ism) than it is in a chance mix of chemicals that somehow led to the complexity of life as we know it. Conventional evolutionism depends upon the assumption that planetary processes have always taken place at more or less the same speed - an act of faith if ever there was one.

If free schools are becoming a serious alternative to state-imposed bigotry then, as an academy head, I reckon they are worth taking very seriously.

Graham Browne, Tor Bridge High, Plymouth.