Dozens of underperforming schools have been forced to wait more than a year to reopen under new management

Dozens of schools rated inadequate by Ofsted have faced waits of more than a year before reopening, amid accusations from Labour that they were “left to fester” by the former Conservative government.

The state of schools and the future of academies has become the subject of an increasingly fraught political row. The Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, accused Keir Starmer last week of “an act of vandalism” in new laws restricting freedoms enjoyed by academies.