Conservatives ditch education commitments from 2017 manifesto, including promise of 100 new free schools a year, and fail to mention academies at all

The Conservative Party will go into this general election without - for the first time in five years - a pledge to build 100 new free schools a year.

That promise, which the free schools booster group the New Schools Network had been lobbying for inclusion again this time, is one of a host of pledges from Theresa May’s “strong and stable” document from last time which have not made it into this year’s edition. The academies policy did not get a single mention.

Back in 2015, David Cameron’s government had promised to build 500 new free schools over the course of what was expected at that time to be a five-year Parliament. In 2017, the party’s manifesto said: “We will continue with our programme of free schools, building at least a hundred new free schools a year.”

But the new pre-election policy document, launched yesterday by Boris Johnson – its low-key status seemingly underlined by the choice of an unusual Sunday slot to unveil it – says only: “We will continue to build more free schools.”

In recent weeks the New Schools Network, part-funded by the taxpayer, has been calling on the political parties to commit to 100 free schools this time around, as it tweeted, for example, only on Saturday.   The lobby group appeared to be offering no reaction to the dropping of the pledge on the organisation’s twitter feed yesterday, although several tweets mentioned alternative provision, which did get a mention in the Tories’ new manifesto (see below).