Sir David Carter said there has been a welcome “change in tone” from the education secretary, recognising that structural change alone was not enough to improve school standards.

In October the government scrapped the Education for All Bill, which would have forced all schools in a local authority to convert to academy status if the council failed to meet a “minimum performance threshold”.

Speaking at the SSAT annual conference this morning, Sir David said: “I really the welcome the change in tone that we’re hearing from Justine Greening as secretary of state, that structures are really important but not in their own being.

“Structures to improve standards - that’s the right objective.”

Becoming an academy “on its own is not going to suddenly produce magic dust that will improve standards,” he said. 

“We still have to do things inside our schools, we still have to focus on teaching, we still have to focus on the quality of leadership,” he said.

“Let’s be in no doubt about this - this government is still on a journey that every school in this country will become an academy, but not by 2022, and not by compulsion.”

He urged school leaders to use academisation to “think about the right partnerships - not rush into land grab conversations about protectionist groups - but really think about the organisations and the groupings that will make a difference”.

Sir David’s comments follow those of outgoing Ofsted chief inspector, Sir Michael Wilshaw, who yesterday implored the government “to worry less about structures and to worry more about capacity”.

“No structure will be effective if the leadership is poor or there are not enough good people in the classroom,” Sir Michael said.

Earlier in the week, Lord Nash told the education select committee that continued academisation would reach a “tipping point” in the next five or six years when it would no longer be possible to run a “dual system”.

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