No parent, student or teacher would oppose the building of a new fully staffed and resourced community school, School of the Future, Peers Academy proposal (Oxford Mail, March 22).

Indeed, it is a fundamental birthright of every child to have access to free, high-quality education in a good local school which is accountable to the community through locally-elected councillors.

Transforming Peers into an academy would not turn it into an "effective community school", as claimed by Department for Education and Skills spokesman Daniel Webb-Jones. Indeed, the opposite would happen.

The local community would lose democratic control of the school. Academy sponsors can, and always do, appoint the majority of the governors. Parents, staff and local authority governors in the academy would be in a permanent minority.

In addition, the present publicly-owned buildings and grounds would be transferred to the Diocese of Oxford and the three other named sponsors of the plan, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford and Cherwell Valley College and BMW.

For a minimal financial contribution towards the £30m cost of the new school, these four unaccountable sponsors' would be given control of a modern independent school and receive the entire school budget directly from the Government.

One has to ask why, if the Government is prepared to hand out such sums of money, it does not give the money directly to the local authority to build and control a new school.

The national bodies of the teacher unions, NUT, NASUWT, ATL, and Unison, the school support workers' union, are all opposed to the creation of academies and are part of the Anti-Academies Alliance (www.antiacademies.org.uk).

We must defend free public education and ensure that all children can attend a good local school, which is democratically accountable to the local community.

Chris Blakey, Vice President Oxfordshire Association National Union of Teachers. Brenda Williams, Secretary Oxfordshire Association NUT