PETER Scaife ( Courant Letters , June 17) is right to raise concerns at the prospect of QEHS becoming an academy.

I would like to add a couple of points: the potential folly of applying a private school model to all schools, and the shortcomings of school consultations.

Academies were conceived by one privately educated prime minister and they have been expanded way beyond their original purpose under the stewardship of the current privately educated prime minister.

Like private schools, academies are independent entities which may or may not choose to collaborate among themselves to pursue particular goals. It remains to be seen whether a national system of independent schools not supported by strong, albeit imperfect, local authorities can ensure a good local school for every child.

This Government and the previous one have denigrated and defunded the work of local authorities to the point where LA employees struggle to provide the services and expertise on which the majority of schools still depend.

When a consultation takes place on a major and irrevocable change such as the one proposed for QEHS, the education system is now so complex that the process is inevitably flawed and divisive. No participant has access to full information and no participant can guarantee the future.

As far as I can ascertain, the Ofsted grading of a Northumberland high school post academisation is more likely to go down than up.

Try getting to the accuracy or otherwise as well as the reasons for that during consultation. Or try convincing parents about the recourse available to them post-academisation when they are dissatisfied with a school decision and there is perhaps no parent governor and certainly no local authority to turn to. Or try ascertaining whether there is a greater risk of financial mismanagement post academisation.

Some enthusiasts for academisation see it as opening a door for the future reintroduction of selection. How can consultation adequately provide other than vague reassurances, one way or the other, about that?

When a bandwagon such as academisation is on the move some will argue that it makes pragmatic sense to try to jump aboard. Others will wish to resist.

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