The politician in charge of Kent schools has delivered a withering assessment of his own party’s plans to force all to become academies, saying it is flawed and no proof it will push up standards.

Cllr Roger Gough, KCC’s Conservative cabinet member for schools, said the plans would lead to less checks and balances locally, upheaval when it was least needed and ran counter to his own party’s belief in autonomy.

He also warned that the Kent taxpayer is likely to pick up the bill for the huge task of conversion, likely to run into millions of pounds.

The government is facing a growing backlash over its announcement to make all schools, with opposition across the board. The NUT is threatening to strike over the plan.

Cllr Gough, writing in an article for Conservative Home, said: “This isn’t about councillors trying to hang on to their fiefdoms. Nor is it about denigrating academy status or those schools who have already adopted it.”

He pulls apart the government’s declared intention to give schools greater freedom on the issue of whether to become academies or stay as council-run schools.

“Whitehall now clearly believes that it knows those schools’ best interests than they do themselves. School autonomy only counts when it comes up with the ‘right’ answer.”

He says there is not enough evidence to support the government’s assertion that academy schools were in any way better.

“Whitehall now clearly believes that it knows those schools’ best interests than they do themselves. School autonomy only counts when it comes up with the ‘right’ answer" - Cllr Roger Gough, Conservative

“The logic of insistence on compulsion must be a belief that academisation is the only route to becoming a good or outstanding school, or at the very least that there is a demonstrable, systemic difference between the performance of academies and that of maintained schools. Yet the evidence simply does not support this.”

He goes on to say that the government has gone back on its pledge not to force on schools academy status.

He quotes education secretary Nicky Morgan who said when she became education secretary that she was against compulsion.

Under the government's proposals, every school will be an academy by 2020 - regardless of whether they want to be