EDUCATION Secretary Bridget Phillipson today rejected claims that her team tried to intimidate high-profile “free school” leader Katharine Birbalsingh.

The two met on February 3 after the headteacher and co-founder of the Michaela Community [free] School criticised proposed academy reforms in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.

Labour plans to require academies to follow the core national curriculum, end the presumption that new schools should be academies and cover all teachers by the same pay and conditions framework, reforms welcomed by teaching unions but which have led Ms Birbalsingh to denounce Ms Phillipson as a Marxist.

According to government minutes of the meeting, Ms Phillipson asked Ms Birbalsingh, who also chairs the Social Mobility Commission, to “lower her tone” and “allow her to finish her sentences.”

Ms Birbalsingh subsequently said that Ms Phillipson’s team were “being horrible” and “trying to intimidate us.”

After being played Ms Birbalsingh’s account of the meeting, Ms Phillipson told Sky News’ Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips programme: “Look, that’s just not as it was.

“I have meetings all of the time with school leaders [but] I’m not going to comment on private meetings held in good faith because I want people to be able to express their views openly and candidly.”

In January Ms Birbalsingh wrote an article in the Spectator which accused Ms Phillipson of being “blinded by a Marxist ideology,” saying that she was concerned the minister would “destroy the huge gains made over the last decade.”

She also accused the Education Secretary of not being interested in schools.

Government minutes of the meeting were obtained by Schools Week under the Freedom of Information Act.

They claim that Ms Birbalsingh repeatedly interrupted the minister and asked if she was introducing the Bill with an eye to becoming prime minister.