Schools could ‘wither on the vine' under Whitehall's plans to turn them all into academies – and the poor will suffer most, Ofsted's chief inspector has warned. 

In a scathing speech, Sir Michael Wilshaw claimed that forced academisation would not be enough to turn around failing schools in deprived parts of the country and that the Government's market-based approach to education risked ‘repeating all the mistakes of the worst local authorities'.