The Schools Secretary was today accused of jeopardising the school academy scheme through indifference.

The Government has pledged to create 400 academies, sponsored by big business, universities and large private schools, but MPs were today told that Ed Balls had stopped backing the programme.

Nick Weller, from the Independent Academies Association, said the lack of ministerial enthusiasm for the scheme, in which failing schools are taken over by private companies, is coming "right from the top" from a "Schools Secretary who doesn't want to be there".

In evidence on the flagship system, which was championed by Tony Blair, he told the Schools Select Committee: "There is a feeling that the Academies movement is being led by people who don't believe in it.

“This is a legacy policy which a few years ago was believed in very passionately by its advocates, but I don't think that's the case now.”

He added: "In all but a few cases academies have succeeded in turning around schools.”

Academies were originally intended to transform schools in the least privileged areas.

But the schools are now being built in affluent rather than deprived areas in order to capitalise on an intake of pupils from wealthy backgrounds, it was claimed.

Alasdair Smith, of the Anti-Academies Alliance, said: "There is a pressure on companies and sponsors to create academy schools that are very good so they build in the non-deprived areas because they want their chain and their brand to look good."

Campaigners have accused sponsors of allowing middle class parents to colonise academies in order to drive up standards and of expelling more than the average number of pupils in order to artificially improve behaviour records.

The number of children on free school meals, a sign of the level of deprivation of a school's population, decreases as academy schools improve, MPs heard.

Daniel Moynihan, of the Harris Federation of South London Schools which are sponsored by a chain of carpet fitters, said that as academies drive up standards they attract pupils from better off backgrounds.

"They will take a broader balance of students and free school meal numbers will decrease," he said.

But Mr Smith said there was no "academy silver bullet".

"I can't see any evidence that academy heads are doing anything different that our community school heads… there isn't a wonderful academy effect," he said.

Vernon Coaker, Schools Minister, said: "Far from lacking direction, we are accelerating the Academies programme. Ed Balls today announced the next stage of development for four new Academies and this September will see the largest number of Academies opening in one year.

“Academies are a key part of our relentless drive to raise standards in deprived areas across the country and in a relatively short time they have made remarkable progress."

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