A free school being set up by the Tories’ star teacher, Katharine Birbalsingh, will not open this year as planned. 
Birbalsingh gave a blistering speech to the Conservative party conference in 2010 in which she attacked dumbed-down standards in exams and “chaos” in classrooms.
She illustrated her speech with pictures of pupils at her then school, St Michael and All Angels C of E Academy in south London. Soon after the speech, she left the school. The school itself closed last year.
Birbalsingh had planned to open a secondary school, the Michaela community school, in Tooting, south London, this September, but she has failed to secured her preferred location.
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Stephen Twigg writes here:
