Commenting on the Government’s plans to allow successful schools, education institutions, business, faith and charity groups to run chains of schools, Christine Blower General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, the largest teachers’ union, said;

"I fail to understand why Ed Balls should try and construct ever more complicated ways of tying up schools with sponsors. There is absolutely no evidence that sponsors, tied in to the governance of schools, do anything other than restrict those schools' ability to have wide and flexible relationships with organisations in the outside world. Instead, sponsors are there to take over the running of schools and impose their particular views of how schools should be run.

"The Government's obsession with extending chains of sponsors to primary schools will have the effect of inhibiting the effectiveness and achievement of those schools, rather than liberating their creativity and innovation. There are already concerns about sufficient primary school places in some areas; this system will stifle a strategic approach to tackling this problem".