A NORTH-EAST educationalist has warned that the Government’s rush towards more academies as a way of improving coasting schools is not supported by hard evidence.

Plans to take swift action to turn round under-performing schools were confirmed in the Queen’s Speech.

Under a new Education and Adoption Bill, new powers will be brought in to speed up the process of changing a failing school’s leadership and turning it into an academy.

Those considered to be “coasting” – not performing as well as they could be – will also face being taken over as part of a fresh Government bid to raise standards.

But Peter Tymms, professor of education at Durham University urged caution, arguing that there is still little or no evidence to support the Government’s plans.

“We are all agreed we want schools to do better. The question is, how do you do it? The Government believe they can improve schools by putting in more academies, getting local control and taking away local authority control but I do not see the evidence that is the way forward or that this is going to make a big difference,” said Prof Tymms.

He said he believed the approach was “too simplistic”, as most schools had strengths and weaknesses.

“It panders to a quick solution. The theory is that somehow what you need is this local control, turning them into something like a private school and all will be well. Actually the evidence for that isn’t good and in Norway, where they have gone down this road, it has had catastrophic results,” said Prof Tymms.

The new Bill will also give regional schools commissioners powers to parachute top headteachers into failing schools and quickly turn them into academies.

There will also be a new definition of a “coasting school” which is likely to cover factors such as a lack of pupil progress and under-performance.