A PLEA for Worcestershire County Council to stop encouraging schools to convert to academies has been rejected.

Councillor Paul Denham, a retired teacher turned politician, says he fears the 'black hole' in school funding will get worse if more are allowed to make the change.

For 2015/16 the money the authority gets for education is reducing by £1.7 million to take into account the growing number of academy conversions.

The county now has 59 academy and two free schools independent of council control.

Cllr Denham said: "It must be the case that because we've got £1.7 million less money, it will have an impact somewhere.

"Why is it that we are encouraging the conversion of schools to academy status when we know of the consequences?"

Speaking during a full council meeting, he labelled the funding cut a "black hole".

"It is very clear that, as a direct consequence of 59 former county schools converting to academy status, the Department for Education has reduced Worcestershire’s 2015/16 funding by £1.7 million more than we were actually spending on those schools before they became academies," he said.

He asked Councillor Liz Eyre, cabinet member for children and young people, to outline the impact of that loss.

She said: "Yes, we've lost different monies in different years, but we haven't actually had a reduction on educational outcomes.

"For most pupils educational outcomes have improved."

She also told the chamber the Conservative leadership would be encouraging any more schools that want to change, to go for it.

The administration insists those with more autonomy are performing extremely well, saying it has helped make 89 per cent of county schools get to ratings of 'good' or better in the Ofsted ratings.

Key Stage 4 results are also performing better than before.

"It's quite a complicated picture, yes we don't want us to lose any funding but I don't think it will change our support for academies," said Cllr Eyre.

The criticism comes one month after we revealed how each academy conversion costs taxpayers £10,000 in administrative costs.

It means around £600,000 has been spent on it in recent years including sorting out property, legal and HR issues.