County councillors have told education secretary Nicky Morgan she must rethink her plan to force all schools to become academies.

In what amounts to a broadside over the controversial changes, county councillors have unanimously voted to write to the education secretary to say the reforms are flawed and should be dropped.

The criticism from the largest Conservative-run education authority in the country adds to a growing political backlash over the plans.

The issue of forcing schools to convert to academies came under the spotlight at a meeting today (Tuesday) where councillors raised a series of concerns.

Cllr Roger Gough, the council’s Conservative cabinet member for schools, said he was not opposed to academies but the evidence that they were better than maintained schools was not proven.

He said he had “considerable concerns” over the policy - notably the element of compulsion - but he was not hostile to academies.

“We work extremely well with academies across Kent. But the government appears to have come to a view that it knows what is better for schools than schools themselves. School autonomy is fine so long as it comes up with the right answer,” he said.

“We do not believe there is an evidence base for this wholesale change. There are example where it has worked well and examples where it has worked less well.”

'The government appears to have come to a view that it knows what is better for schools than schools themselves' - Conservative county council cabinet member for schools, Roger Gough

He highlighted concerns about the timetable for the reforms, saying it would leave schools who needed help in the lurch because councils had been told to dismantle their school improvement teams.

“The council’s role in school improvement is to be removed. Yet you will not have a vast number of more academies by 2017. It is not at all clear how that hiatus is going to be filled,” he said.

The reforms would come at a “significant cost” to KCC “in terms of time and energy” and represented the “nationalisation and regionalisation” of the school system.

Labour councillor Roger Truelove said: “You would think the government would tackle real issues rather than ideological nonsense. The real issues are lack of school places, lack of teachers. This has nothing to tackle these problems. Removing our school improvement role is an unnecessary disaster.”

Labour opposition leader Cllr Gordon Cowan said: “The government cannot expect local authorities to dip into their own pockets and expect us to spend millions of pounds that we haven’t got,” he said.

UKIP opposition leader Cllr Roger Latchford echoed: “We are totally opposed to these reforms. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

For the Liberal Democrats, Cllr Rob Bird denounced plans to scrap parent governors from academies. "We all know that schools that have strong engagement of parents perform well and it would be very regrettable if the role of parents was diminished."

Education officials said the cost to the taxpayer of converting schools to academies had been about £1.2m - mainly legal fees - which the council would not get back. Converting the remainder would cost potentially another £2m to £3m.

About three quarters of secondary schools in Kent have become academies while about one in four primary schools have.

KCC still has 28 secondary schools, 335 primary schools and 22 special schools.