Nick Clegg has pledged that local authorities will remain a crucial lynchpin in the education system, despite the Government's push to increase the number of free schools and make academies ‘the norm'.

Setting out the coalition's approach to schools in a 5 September speech, the deputy prime minister said: ‘Councils have an essential job.' He promised that the continued expansion of the academies programme would lead to a rebalancing of school freedom against local accountability.