School standards minister Nick Gibb today was today jeered by MPs as he insisted that the Department for Education was not struggling to find sponsors for underperforming schools.

His assertion, during today’s Education Questions, comes in the wake of recent decisions to close schools that were ordered to convert into academies, but for which no sponsor could be found.

Mr Gibb was responding to a question by Labour MP Heidi Alexander, who asked how many schools in England subject to an academy order have not confirmed a sponsor.

He said there were more than 2,000 open, sponsored academies, as well as 92 schools subject to an academy order that were in the process of being rebrokered.

“This involves brokering a relationship between a suitable academy trust and maintained schools, including addressing any land or contractual issues,” he said, adding: “A school without a confirmed sponsor is not generally due to a lack of sponsor but due to the time it takes to address those issues.”

But Ms Alexander pointed to a school in her Lewisham East constituency that could not find a sponsor and has instead signed a three-year school improvement plan.

She said: “If they’re struggling so much to find sponsors for academies, why is it still a central plank of his school turnaround strategy?”

‘Raising standards’

To audible jeers, Mr Gibb replied: “We’re not, across the system as a whole, struggling to find new sponsors.” Above the background noise, one MP can be heard shouting: “Yes you are.”

But Mr Gibb continued: “We have 7,000 academies now, most of which are converter academies, which themselves are becoming sponsors of underperforming schools across the system.

“This is a system that is working - secondary sponsored academies made the strongest improvements in 2016,  despite facing the biggest challenges.”

He concluded: “The academies programme is working and it’s raising standards right across the system.”

Tes revealed last year that dozens of “inadequate” schools had been left without a match 12 months after being ordered to convert into an academy.

This is despite the 2016 Education and Adoption Act stating that all maintained schools that Ofsted judges “inadequate” must become a sponsored academy.

And no schools had been turned into academies as a result of falling into the new category of “coasting schools”, which was introduced by the same law, despite a 2015 Tory manifesto pledge that all coasting secondary schools would be converted.

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