The new shadow education secretary Tristam Hunt has said that Labour is "on the side" of parents who want to set up schools, stating that if the party was to form a new government at the next election, it would not seek to close most existing free schools.

Free schools are those that have been set up by parents and other stakeholder groups that do not need to answer to their local authority. They were established under a policy pioneered by education secretary Michael Gove and more than 170 have been opened across England since September 2011.

In what may be viewed as a shift in policy, Mr Hunt told the BBC that his party backed the "enterprise and innovation" shown by many free schools, which had helped to create more school places.

Labour's stance on free schools has been ambiguous, having opposed their introduction, but backed individual projects on a local basis and Mr Hunt's predecessor Stephen Twigg had already needed to back down from calling the idea a "vanity project for yummy mummies". 

When speaking to BBC One's Andrew Marr programme, the party's new education spokesman clarified that new free schools would not be introduced under a Labour government, but his party wanted to "keep the good free schools" open.

He flagged up the case of the Al-Madinah free school in Derby and said Labour would not allow schools to become an "ideological experiment". A teaching job in a free school in London was also the subject of controversy last week when a head who had been appointed with no formal experience quit her role at Pimlico Primary.

Mr Hunt added that new free schools would only be sanctioned in areas where there was a shortage of places and "properly qualified" staff could be recruited.

As a teacher or someone looking for a teaching job, what are your views on free schools?