Government plans will leave teachers asking what exactly free schools have to do with professional freedom

After a long holiday from business as usual, it was back to school at Westminster yesterday. The government made detailed proposals, and the opposition duly opposed. The perennial question was how to structure state education, with the new secretary of state, Michael Gove, writing to every school to stoke their interest in becoming a semi-independent academy. In these bewildering times, however, there is always a bewildering twist, and has Mr Gove supplied it through his repeated admissions that the Tory zeal for academies was inspired by none other than Tony Blair. With a keen sense that the Conservatives must remain anchored in the mainstream, the schools secretary shrewdly discerns advantage in presenting his plans as heirs to Blair's own – before they were rudely rewritten by the Labour backbench.

Mr Blair did indeed wish to see "every state school an independent state school". There was, however, one extra ingredient in the Blair formula, namely money. Whatever good academies may do, they will do less where resources are stretched, as they are decidedly still set to be, despite this week's promise that the axe will not swing the way of the classroom for another few months. Without the shiny Richard Rogers design, would Mossbourne community academy, which Mr Gove hailed yesterday, really have created the buzz of excitement that has made such a difference? It seems unlikely, and it seems unlikely, too, that either academies or other schools will be able to do as much for struggling students as they could before one-to-one tuition was scaled back this week. A shortage of funds will not merely diminish the advantages, but also aggravate the fears. Disputes about the mismatch between terms for ordinary staff and overpaid autonomous bosses, such as that at Crest boys' academy in Neasden, will spread if austerity is the order of the day for the rank and file.

Academies have, on average, outpaced the pack in recent years, as the ministry pointed out forcefully yesterday; it was less keen to revisit its own past conclusion that the effect of autonomy varies greatly across different schools. The evidence from Sweden, whose privately run state schools Mr Gove regards as the template for the next step of his reforms, suggests that such success as the free schools have enjoyed may have come at the expense of their less-free rivals, and herein lies the gravest potential objection. Academies are their own authorities so far as admissions are concerned, and it seems fair to ask what possible advantage this freedom is meant to confer, other than the freedom to cherry-pick easier students? Thanks to Mr Blair's pesky rebels, there is an admissions code in law, which should prevent overt selection, but it will be tough for Whitehall to police as academies mushroom from the low hundreds into the thousands under the Gove plans.

The sensible way to settle admissions on behalf of the community is keep power with the local authority. That is perfectly compatible with granting individual schools other academy-style freedoms, which is what the Liberal Democrats sensibly proposed at the election. With the education department yesterday having nothing to say about the strategic role of town halls in the future, it seemed they had lost this particular battle within the coalition.

They have won other battles though, for instance, on attaching real money to the funding premium for poorer pupils, a measure which might keep the cherry-picking under control. They might also make headway on slimming down an over-prescriptive curriculum. Mr Gove's promise to keep league tables, and his talk of requiring pupils to master their English kings, may please the Tory conference, but it will leave teachers asking what exactly free schools have to do with professional freedom. They will be looking to the Lib Dems to ensure that the freedom of academies is not merely academic so far as the classroom is concerned.