By Gary Eason Education editor, BBC News website

The government says academies are very popular with parents

The idea that city academies replace "failing" schools is being challenged.

The issue is central to a court case being brought by parents in Merton, south-west London, about the conversion of a local comprehensive to an academy.

In Teesside, the former deputy head of a school merged into a new academy said it had excellent Ofsted reports.

And in Hull, a chair of governors says her school has been nominated as an academy even though it was neither failing academically nor dilapidated.

Academies are independent state schools backed by outside sponsors who put in up to �2m of capital.

In return, the sponsors get control of the governance. The government usually pays for a total refurbishment or rebuilding, and pays all the running costs.

'Inheritance of failure'

Ministers have given the impression they are the last hope in areas of educational despair.

For example, last summer the then school standards minister, Jacqui Smith, explained the poor exam results of many academies by saying: "Tackling an inheritance of failure can take time.

"The government never claimed that academies would bring overnight success when they are inheriting failing schools."

In March another minister, Lord Adonis, said of the national curriculum test results: "You can't criticise academies for not yet being at the top of the performance table when they started the game behind on penalties thanks to poor standards at the failing schools they replaced."

Merton

This sort of thing angers some people in Merton, opposing the takeover of Tamworth Manor High School by Lord Harris of Peckham, of Carpetright fame, who already backs other academies, specialist schools and city technology colleges.

In last year's GCSE-level exams, 31% of pupils achieved the equivalent of five or more good grades.

I don't pay taxes for big businessmen to run my schools Rob Macdonald anti-academy parent

While not good, compared with a national average of 57%, this was markedly better than the 21% the school had achieved in the previous year and 19% the year before.

Campaigners say that, far from being a failure, the results made Tamworth Manor the fastest improving school in the borough.

"It's extremely undemocratic to give the running of schools over to private hands," said Rob Macdonald, whose son is in the middle of his GCSE years at the school.

"I don't pay taxes for big businessmen to run my schools. Privatisation has failed everywhere it's been tried and I don't want it tried on my child."

The local council's view, however, is that the improvements that there have been are not good enough.

At a public consultation meeting on the plans, council leader Andrew Judge said Tamworth Manor had done better than nearby Mitcham Vale, where another academy is planned.

But it was still in the bottom 8% of schools in London, and a transformation was needed so that every child had the opportunity of a better education.

Only the prospect of an academy can bring about the "step change" necessary, the council says.

"Academy status would build on the good work already undertaken and increase the speed of progress."

Middlesbrough

A Department for Education and Skills spokesman told BBC News: "At the point at which the decision was made to create these individual academies, three quarters of schools were in special measures, had serious weaknesses or were of serious concern to Ofsted.

"The vast majority also had a history of chronically low GCSE results. Academies have achieved substantially better GCSE results than predecessor schools."

In a previous response to a consultants' report it had commissioned on academies, the department said: "Some academies, including academies with failing predecessor schools, are making very rapid progress."

It gave as an example the maths and science test results of 14-year-olds at King's Academy, Middlesbrough, which it said had "more than doubled in a year", from 26% reaching the expected level in 2003 to 57% in 2004.

If the academy programme is so successful, why is it necessary to denigrate the work of previous schools? Gordon Potter former deputy head

But at Coulby Newham School, one of the two that King's replaced, results in 2002 had shown 69% getting the expected level in English, 57% in maths and 66% in science.

Prime Minister Tony Blair said in the Commons: "There is nothing more inspiring, particularly when one knew the old school that the King's Academy replaced, than to see the brand new buildings, the total commitment of the teachers and staff, and the pupils there eager to learn.

"It is one of the best examples of modern social justice that I can think of."

But Gordon Potter, Coulby Newham's deputy head, has a sense of injustice.

"Coulby Newham School had been judged as good in two Ofsted reports," he said.

When inspectors visited in 2002 the school was found to be even better.

"Indeed [they] stated quite clearly that the new school should adopt the practices that had made Coulby Newham so successful. Sats results were the best in the town."

In other words, it might have been working in an area of social disadvantage, but it was doing so effectively.

"As the school's deputy head teacher I am tired of the constant spin that claims the school was failing," Mr Potter said.

"If the academy programme is so successful, why is it necessary to denigrate the work of previous schools?"

Hull

Eunice Evans is chair of governors at Pickering High School in Hull, where results have risen over four years from 20% getting the equivalent of five A* to C at GCSE level to 31%.

It was described by Ofsted as a good school with the capacity to improve even further.

Yet within a year of succeeding in its application to become a specialist sports college, it was nominated by the local authority as the site for a new academy.

This was all the more surprising because another local secondary in similarly "challenging circumstances" had been discussed as a likely candidate.

Having at least one academy had been a requirement of the Department for Education and Skills to release �200m in "building schools for the future" refurbishment money, Mrs Evans said.

"We are neither a failing school nor are our buildings in a dilapidated condition, but set in a green, open aspect with a listed frontage."

The city council however describes it as having "a 1930s building, with poor roofs, floors and stairs and leaking windows".

Location

Ms Evans said: "Our proposed sponsor was very surprised when he met us as he was expecting the usual 'academy' school."

She thinks Pickering's location is a key factor - on the western edge of the city, bordering the East Riding of Yorkshire whose better performing schools tend to attract middle class parents.

The city council's "education vision" acknowledges this.

"The important strategic location of the proposed academy has the potential to reduce the number of children leaving the city annually, and particularly at the point of transfer to secondary school, to take advantage of perceived better schooling opportunities in the East Riding of Yorkshire."

But Ms Evans said: "We felt we were being sacrificed."

She said a lot of staff did not like the idea of an outside sponsor coming in.

"I have been a school governor for 17 years. If I thought I was going to be suddenly removed because I wasn't what he wanted I would not be very happy."

But she had tried to be fair-minded about it. The sponsor, Adrian Beecroft of the City venture capital firm Apax Partners, "was saying things we agree with". "My head and I have had long discussions about the possible advantages, especially with our sponsor being who he is," she said.

For now, they were "just trying to keep the school in good heart" but feel "in limbo".

"We were devastated to be told, last year. I was furious."