Labour will work with teachers to ‘stop’ academies, Corbyn to tell NUT conference

Labour will work with teachers to “stop” plans to turn all schools into academies, Jeremy Corbyn will say this afternoon.

The Labour leader will tell the National Union of Teachers annual conference in Brighton that the government wants to “shut parents out” of having a say in how their children’s schools are run.

He will accuse chancellor George Osborne, who announced the plans to force every state school to become an academy by 2022 in his budget earlier this month, as an “ideological attack on teachers and on local and parental accountability”.

He will say: “I want schools accountable to their parents and their communities – not to those pushing to be first in line for the asset-stripping of our education system.”

Mr Corbyn will also describe the “real crisis” facing schools – rising class sizes, teacher shortages and other issues – and claim £700 million will be needed to fund the “needless reorganisation” announced in the budget.

He will say: “Labour will work with you, with parents and pupils, with local authorities and with our communities to defend education and stop these plans for forced academisation.”