ACADEMIES should be allowed to return to local authority control, the National Association of Head Teachers union has declared.

Heads should be able to ask for their school’s academy status to be reversed if it benefits pupils, delegates at the NAHT annual conference in Harrogate heard.

A motion passed on Saturday called on the union’s executive to lobby the government to amend the legislation preventing academies from returning to local authority control.

It said that some schools that have joined multi-academy trusts “regret” it, and the government should provide a process for a school to join another trust or rejoin the local authority.

The government’s Children’s Wellbeing & Schools Bill will require academies — state schools that are independent of local authorities — to teach the national curriculum and offer the same core pay and conditions framework.

But the Bill does not include a route to allow academies to return to local authority oversight.

Delegate Alasdair Black from Coventry said his own experience of academisation had been dreadful, describing the current system as being like “a marriage without the prospect of divorce.”

He said: “This is purely about giving schools a choice. Whether they take it or not, that’s up to them.

“Currently there is no choice, and this is just about giving them a potential option which they may or may not choose to take.”

Delegate Rubina Darr from Birmingham said: “I feel that if we were offered the opportunity to go back to our local authorities —which have been politically damaged on purpose — it would be in a heartbeat that we would go back. A just system should be one system.”