The call has come from the Local Government Association (LGA), which has questioned the capacity of the academies system to take on more schools.
The Education and Adoption Bill, currently going through Parliament, would force “failing schools” to convert to sponsored academies.
The DfE has said it expects up to 1,000 local authority maintained schools to be converted into academies under the new legislation.
There is anger because the proposals would see the duty to consult local stakeholders over academy conversion scrapped for “inadequate” schools being forced to convert.
However, the LGA, which represents 370 councils across England and Wales, claims that only three of the 20 largest academy chains are “viable” to take on additional schools.
Furthermore, Parliament’s Committee of Public Accounts recently revealed that 18 academy chains have been prevented from expanding further because of concerns about standards in their schools.
At the same time, the LGA points out that more than 80 per cent of council maintained schools are currently rated by Ofsted as good or outstanding.
The Bill began the committee stage in the House of Lords last week and the LGA is calling for an amendment to give maintained schools or local authorities the option to sponsor a failing school.
Cllr Roy Perry, chairman of the LGA’s Children and Young People Board, said: “Councils are education improvement partners and not a barrier to change.
“Schools spend billions of pounds of public money yet, at present, there is no rigorous accountability for academies that are ‘coasting’, no clear understanding of what happens when one falls into this category, and no risk-assessment in place for those rated as good or above.”
Cllr Perry said that only 15 per cent of the largest academy chains perform above the national average in terms of progress made by pupils, compared with 44 per cent of councils, which “calls into question the capacity of high-quality sponsors to take on additional schools”.
He continued: “When putting in place support for a school to improve outcomes for children, the focus should be on the quality and capability of a sponsor – whether that is a sponsor academy, a high-performing maintained school, or a local authority.
“For parents, who are far more concerned with the quality of their child’s education in the classroom than the legal status of the school, it is the council that they still frequently and naturally turn to for advice and support.
“However, councils’ current powers to intervene are strictly limited. The Education and Adoption Bill provides the ideal opportunity to right this wrong and should allow councils and the best maintained schools to share their extensive experience and expertise, and help provide support to school leadership teams to ensure standards rapidly improve.”
The LGA’s call has been backed by teachers’ unions. Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said that local authorities had “a good track record of supporting schools”.
She pointed to a recent analysis by Henry Stewart of the Local Schools Network, which showed that sponsored secondary academies are almost four times as likely to remain “inadequate” compared with maintained schools following conversion.
She continued: “It is academy sponsors, not councils, who underperform. Councils should be trusted to do the job.
“Parents expect to be able to turn to their local council if things are going wrong in their school, but in future the link between democratically elected local authorities and schools could be severed if this Bill is allowed to pass in its current form.
“Instead of undermining the valuable work and experience of local authorities in education, the government should be building the capacity of local authorities to support schools and to continue to provide much needed services to them.
“This also means providing adequate levels of funding and restoring their powers to open maintained schools where they are needed. This is essential amid a school places crisis which the government is singularly failing to address.”
Dr Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said that there is “still no evidence that academies raise standards more than any other school”.
She continued: “The government will be denying parents and staff a say if the only option for struggling schools is to become an academy with the sponsor chosen by the Regional Schools Commissioners. It is not clear how RSCs will evaluate which sponsors will provide the best support for a school.
“If the government allows local authorities and maintained schools to sponsor struggling schools this would be more likely to help raise standards in struggling schools.”