Teachers, support staff and parents picketed Montgomery Primary school in Birmingham on Tuesday morning against the proposal to turn their school into an academy. 60 people joined the picket line. NASUWT, NUT and GMB members were on strike and the school was closed.

This is an example of a Freedom of Information request that has recently been made into a school which is being forced to become and Academy.

The revelation in the Financial Times of significant financial errors in the funding of academy converters suggests that DfE ministers and officials do not have a proper grasp of either the cost or impact of the programme.

Parents, teachers and governors at Downhills Primary School, Tottenham have launched a campaign to prevent the DFE forcing the school to become a sponsored academy by September 2012.

The Financial Times reports that “Hundreds of state schools that took part in the government’s flagship academies reform programme last year were accidentally given large incentives to do so, often worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.”