I AM completely baffled by the current drive to impose academy status on all schools.

It seems that Labour’s policy of using academy status to 'spot-treat' needy schools proved to be such a good idea for some schools that the Tories decided to impose it on all schools, whether needy or not.

I can appreciate that it may be cheaper since academies can employ as teachers people who are not trained or have QTS. Moreover, the latest budget cut government grants for local authority management of schools.

It may also be desirable to escape the National Curriculum and Ofsted but why are Ofsted and the National Curriculum compulsory for council schools, while only academies can be liberated to ‘experiment and innovate’ Academies don’t have to follow the National Curriculum and can set their own term times.

I am very dubious about anything which can be divisive at the very time when we need to stand united.

Academies attract more faith schools, while I would prefer the sort of secular system set up in France.

It is very hard to find statistics on which to base a comparison of academies and council controlled schools.

Eighty-two per cent of council schools are ‘good or outstanding,’ so why can local councils and parents no longer be relied on to run them, even where they are Tory councils?

We do not need academies on this scale.

The election promises to devolve more power to local bodies have faded away.

At election time, Mr Cameron made much of ‘localism’.

He seems to have reversed this policy, first over housing and now over education.

On Countryfile in January 2012 and repeated January 12, 2014, David Cameron appeared on film, promising that it was going to be easier for local people to say that: “We are not going to have the big housing estates swamping our villages, but we would like 10, 20, 30 homes for local people.”

Decisions would be made locally, ‘not by a man in Whitehall’.

Recent experience has convinced me of the need to retain power locally for planning, and now for education.

‘Localism’ was a good idea.

What a pity that it turned into a mirage.

J Graham

King’s Stanley