by political editor Paul Francis

County education chiefs do not intend turning their back on the Government's controversial school academy programme after a study questioned how successful it was.

Kent County Council is a joint sponsor of a number of academies and is preparing to open several more, including an "all-through" academy based at Ashford's Christ Church School for both primary and secondary aged children. Another is planned for Tunbridge Wells while the latest, Sheppey's Minster College, opened last year.

But experts at the London School of Economics suggest the results of academy schools are "statistically indistinguishable" from those of comprehensives.

The study looked at the performance of academies between 2002 and 2006, comparing them to poorly-performing schools nearby.

It found that while academies improved their results by between 9.6 and 14.1 per cent, so to did the other schools, which improved by between six and 14.5 per cent.

The authors of the study, Professor Stephen Machin of University College London, and Joan Wilson said academies' exam results "look less impressive when benchmarked against other poorly-performing matched state schools that did not become academies...overall, these changes in GCSE performance are statistically indistinguishable from one another".

They said: "We find no evidence of general positive effects on academic attainment from academy status; however, there is substantial variation and there is some specific evidence of positive effects in some of the cohorts of new academies."

Kent County Council said it remained committed to the academy programme.

Rosalind Turner, KCC managing director for children, families and education said: "As a major sponsor of Kent's academies, we are very proud of them and what they have achieved.

"You cannot change everything overnight - but by providing state of the art facilities and changing the curriculum you can continue to improve education."

She highlighted the "significant successes" achieved by some academies and the growing popularity of them among parents, including the Marsh Academy, in New Romney. There the percentage of pupils achieving five A*-C GCSEs rose from the 37 per cent achieved by the previous school to 62 per cent in its first year.

Ms Turner added: "We are committed to making sure of the highest quality education for all our students and we believe that academies have a role to play in achieving this.

"We will continue to develop the academies that are planned or underway, and we will talk to people about developing more academies when we think they have the potential to improve learning for children and young people."