Sir – John Tanner and Jane Gallagher rightly question county moves to force selected Oxford primary schools to become academies (Letters, February 16).

Government rhetoric implying that academy status raises school performance is not borne out by the facts. The DfE’s own analysis this January of 2010/11 GCSE results shows that, whereas 57.8 per cent of comprehensive students achieved 5+ GCSEs or equivalent at A*–C (including English and Maths), only 50.1 per cent of academy students did so; sponsor-led academies performed even less well at 46.8 per cent.

No performance data are available to compare the few existing primary academies with maintained primaries, so proposals to convert any Oxfordshire primary schools into academies represent a giant leap in the dark: there is no statistical basis for supposing that standards would rise at all.

Nonetheless, a report adopted by cabinet on February 14 announced ‘the council’s support for the conversion of schools to become academies’. In taking this stance, the county council’s leadership is abdicating its responsibility for sustaining a key local authority service, depriving us of local accountability, and giving away our bricks and mortar, without any electoral mandate for doing so.

Furthermore, since Oxfordshire consults on numerous other proposals, why has there been no public consultation on the plan to ‘academize’ several named primary schools?

The public at large appears more savvy about academy performance than our county council. A February YouGov survey found that only 27 per cent of those polled thought academies would improve education standards; well over half thought they would either make no difference or actually lower standards.

The Government’s academies programme is actually about dismantling local government’s historic role as service provider. By promoting academies in Oxfordshire our county council is colluding in its own decline, and we should be given a say on such a momentous change.

Robin Gill, Headington