Responding to the news that Conservative Councillors have attacked plans to force all schools to become academies Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Education Lucy Powell MP said:

“The alliance against the plans to force all  primary and secondary schools in England to become academies is growing as grassroots Conservatives raise important concerns about this this top-down, costly reorganisation of our schools. 

"Ministers have failed to make any compelling argument for why these plans, which nobody wants and schools don’t need, is necessary. 

"Labour will fiercely oppose these plans. At a time when schools are facing huge challenges of falling budgets for the first time since the mid-1990s, chronic shortages of teachers and not enough good school places, this unnecessary and unfounded distraction of the Government’s will only harm standards in our schools.”