A group of 51 prominent headteachers, including academy heads, attacked the Conservatives’ plans this week to give a range of organisations the power to open their own schools. In a letter to The Guardian, the heads, some with links to Labour, said the Tories’ plans proposed “the threat of across-the-board cuts coupled with boutique experiments borrowed as a result of naive educational tourism”. The letter said the Conservatives’ free school policy would involve “taking millions of pounds from existing schools to create artificial surplus places”.