TURNING schools into academies is failing students, according to new research showing that almost half of the government’s favoured educational establishments fail to ensure expected GCSE results.

According to education think tank Sutton Trust, three out of four academy chains have schools that are “coasting.”

The term, recently coined by Education Secretary Nicky Morgan, describes schools that consistently fail to ensure that 60 per cent of their pupils achieve five good GCSEs.

Association of Teachers and Lecturers deputy general secretary Nansi Ellis said: “This report confirms the government’s own recent evidence that in nine of the 20 larger chains, pupils made significantly below-average progress.

“It also shows that only 10 of the 100 larger local authorities performed as badly.

“Academisation is not the answer to schools’ problems and there is no robust evidence, overall, that academies nationally outperform other types of school.”

Ms Morgan said recently that to improve results schools found “coasting” would be turned into academies.

However, 44 per cent of the individual academies analysed by the Sutton Trust were below the government’s “coasting’’levels in 2014.

Twenty-six of the 34 academy chains had at least one “coasting” school.

Reacting to the Sutton Trust’s results, Labour shadow education minister Tristam Hunt said: “The Tories think that the way to turn around underperforming schools is to simply turn them into academies and then walk away.

“They have no plan for those academies that are struggling, leaving them to fail or ‘coast’ and letting down the children who attend them.”