Voters 'unimpressed with education reforms'

The Government's education reforms have failed to impress voters, according to a survey.

Some 42% of voters think the Government is doing a bad job in reforming the schools system against 23% who believe it is doing a good job, the poll showed.

The ICM study for the Guardian follows the fiasco over Education Secretary Michael Gove's cuts to the Building Schools for the Future programme, which caused confusion for many schools over whether they would receive funding.

Mr Gove's flagship policy to expand the academies system and create new "free schools" has also proved controversial, and strained relationships between the coalition parties.

During the passage of the legislation making the reforms six Liberal Democrat MPs rebelled against the coalition Government to back a call to allow parents to be balloted if a school governor objected to it becoming an academy.

The issue is likely to expose further divisions at next month's Lib Dem conference, where a policy motion calls on party members to oppose the creation of free schools as they risk "increasing social divisiveness and inequity".

In an interview with Channel 4 News last night Deputy Prime Minister and Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg said: "We've always accepted that the driving force in education reform is more decentralisation, more freedom, more autonomy for teachers and headteachers, combined with a very significant shift of resources in favour of supporting disadvantaged children.

"In a sense we've at least legislated for the first bit of that equation and we are now going to make announcements, in the comprehensive spending round on the pupil premium, on the second."

* ICM Research interviewed a random sample of 1,001 adults aged over 18 by telephone from August 13-15. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results were weighted to the profile of all adults.