Children's services director John Nash takes a critical look at the academies programme and its impact on councils.

The story goes that Michael Gove has two ideas inscribed on tickets that he keeps in his trouser pockets: academies and free schools. Depending on which ticket falls out with his handkerchief, he speaks with passion. Everything else is an afterthought without shape or direction. On that list of vague afterthoughts is the 'new strategic role for local authorities in education'; a concept that accompanied the Academies Act in 2010. It had no shape then and it has no shape now.