As the government plans to shut the country’s worst-performing primary schools and re-open them as academies, Sophie Taylor talks to education experts in the city about what the move may mean if implemented in Plymouth.

PARENTS and local communities will be left "powerless" if city schools are forced to become academies, leading education experts have said.

Education Secretary Michael Gove announced plans last summer to close 200 consistently under-performing primary schools from September 2012.

The move forms part of a bid to force schools which have failed to get their pupils to expected levels in maths and English to improve.

But many education experts in the city fail to see how the move will bring about improvement, with some concerned it could render local communities "powerless".

A spokesman for the Plymouth Association of Primary Headteachers, said: "There's great anxiety in the city surrounding the issue. This move could see schools closed and reopened under new leadership. Teachers and staff could lose their jobs and the schools could be completely restructured.

"If the Government see this as a magic wand, a cure for consistently under performing schools, then why haven't they waved it before?"

Academy status gives schools increased freedom over staff pay, the curriculum and opening times. The Government has said it is a "tried and tested" way of turning struggling schools around.

In a statement the Department for Education said: "We can't just stand by and do nothing when schools are sub-standard year after year. Academies are proven to work. They have already turned around hundreds of struggling secondary schools across the country and are improving their results at twice the national average rate.

"We have been clear that we will look to secure sponsored academy status to those schools we find to be consistently under performing and whose results are below national standards."

But John Biddle, regional spokesman for the NASUWT, one of the largest teaching unions in the UK, said: "There is no guarantee that severing links with the local authority will improve things in struggling schools. If schools are forced down the academy route the people of Plymouth won't have a say in education or schools any more – it's a great shame.

"We've spent years negotiating pay and standards for our teachers and now that could all change with very little bother to the government and the companies running the academies.

"It's most concerning - it seems the main agenda is taking the power away from local authorities in a move towards the privatisation of education in which a profit can be made from our children.

"What the city could end up with is a private company owning a string of academies."

The new academies will be taken out of local authority control and funded directly by central government.

Plymouth City Council has said it is supportive of academies.

Cllr Sam Leaves, cabinet member for children and young people, said: "Our view is that it is the council's role to support schools to allow governors the choice of whether they should become independent academies or not."

But the Plymouth Association of Primary Headteachers said schools were at their best when controlling their own destinies with input from local communities. The association said centralised control was a "retrograde" move.

Mr Maddison, headteacher at Morice Town Primary School, said: "The Government should know forcing an organisation to do something is destructive and divisive.

"This whole issue also questions what the government see as a failing school – schools succeed in many ways and using floor standards is only one way of measuring success."

Although the Department for Education will not publicly name the schools they are targeting, the Plymouth Association of Primary Headteachers confirmed that education officers had been in the city.

It is not yet known whether any of the city's primary schools will be affected by the move.