Lucy Powell MP, Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary, commenting on David Cameron’s failure to justify his policy to turn all good and outstanding primary and secondary schools into academies, said:

“David Cameron and Conservative Ministers are desperately scrabbling around trying to justify their plans to force thousands of good and outstanding schools to become academies.

“Ministers already have powers to change the structure of inadequate schools, and they have no answer as to why good and outstanding schools should be forced down this path, when head teachers and parents of children at these schools say they don’t want or need this.

“The truth is these plans are a costly, top-down reorganisation of the schools systems that parents and head teachers are against. It’s no wonder the Tory benches listened in silence to the exchanges today, given the very reasonable concerns that the Prime Minister’s own MPs have raised against the plans. Rather than plough on regardless, David Cameron should ‎drop these plans.”