The document, entitled “Opportunity for all: strong schools with great teachers for your child”, did include at least one key measure that could significantly change the education landscape.

The single most impactful announcement was the promise that all schools in England would either be in a multi-academy trust or in the process of joining one by 2030, with a single regulatory approach.

Six years ago, Nicky Morgan was forced to do an embarrassing U-turn on a similar pledge as education secretary after backbench Conservative rebels rejected the idea of already high-performing schools being forced to become academies.

While most of the 3,500 secondary schools in England are now already academies, the great majority of the 16,800 primaries in the sector are not, with only 44% of mainstream schools in England having made the switch. “There is some logic to all schools becoming academies,” said one commentator. “We know the current system is fragmented. It’s logical to bring schools under the same regulatory framework.”

Critics, however, warn that joining an academy trust does not necessarily lead to higher attainment and that making all schools academies will be fraught with difficulties. Zahawi has sweetened the pill by offering local authorities with successful schools the chance to set up their own multiple-academy trusts. Faced with government pressure to academise, it remains to be seen whether schools, unions and local communities still have the energy for a fight.

Otherwise, the white paper covers familiar territory – the new and widely welcomed national register for children not in school, the use of data to modernise and improve tracking of attendance, the £30,000 starting salary for teachers, plus more and better teacher training.

More than half of academies in England have lacked enough income to cover their annual expenditure, according to figures revealed by ministers. As far as I recall LEAs had to balance their books. This story tells us:

An answer to a Parliamentary question shows that the proportion of academy trusts with an annual shortfall doubled in two years.

It comes amid growing warnings about school funding shortages.

But Schools Minister Nick Gibb told MPs on Tuesday that school funding had been protected and was at record levels.

The figures have been revealed in response to a question about academy expenditure from the Liberal Democrat peer Lord Storey.

These figures for 2014-15 show that 53% of stand-alone academies were recorded as having “spent more than their income per year”, up from 42% in the previous year.

Among multi-academy trusts, the proportion spending more than their income was 53%, compared with 25% in the previous year.

New figures from the Department for Education show 700 small schools in England are being deprived of the cash they need in an “unfair” funding system.

These schools in remote areas currently receive no extra resources to cope with the pressures of serving sparsely populated communities.

Many of these schools struggle because, while their classes are not full, they still have to employ the same numbers of teachers and support staff as if the school rolls were full.

Heating, lighting and cleaning services must also be funded to keep classrooms open even if there are far fewer pupils attending lessons than in urban areas.

If these schools closed, pupils would be forced to travel long distances to classes elsewhere.

Nicky Morgan, the Education Secretary, pledged to re-write the government’s rules on school funding to provide extra cash for primaries – and a few secondaries – in sparsely populated areas of England.

She said: “I want every school to get the funding it deserves and to ensure that we help small rural schools keep their character, independence, values and everything that makes them unique,” she said.

“Many rural schools have been underfunded for years through a system that is unfair and out of date. We are taking steps to deal with the unique issues they face.”

The Department for Education could not provide details of how the new funding system would work. A public consultation on reforming the national funding formula closed last week and officials are now analysing the responses.

The new arrangements are expected to take account of the “sparsity” of the communities that the schools serve. The schools that benefit will be those with fewer than 22 pupils in each primary school year group.

Mrs Morgan said the new funding formula, which will be launched next year, would “underpin the sustainability and future success of rural schools, ensuring they remain at the heart of the local community”.

The plans will be seen as an attempt to win support among Conservative backbench MPs, who are threatening to rebel over Mrs Morgan’s plan to force all state schools to become semi-independent academies.

Mr Osborne has said all schools in England must convert to become academies by 2020 or be committed to converting by 2022. Any school that does not convert will be forced to do so by ministers using radical new powers to intervene.

However, Tory MPs fear that remote rural schools which rely on support from their councils could lose the support they need or be forced to close by the executives running national chains of academies.

Up to 1,000 schools in England, including all those rated inadequate by Ofsted, will be turned into academies under plans being published later.

The Education and Adoption Bill seeks to “remove bureaucratic and legal loopholes” that slow up the process of turning failing schools into academies.

Education Secretary Nicky Morgan said schools would be improved faster by academy sponsorship under the plans.

Labour said the “divisive” bill missed the challenges faced by schools.

Janet May says she speaks for her entire village as she vents her frustration. “The word I would use to describe my feelings now is desperate. As a group we are incredibly sad and angry, but we also feel powerless in the face of the refusal of the academy trust to engage with us. Their whole attitude has been one of contempt.

“They say they have listened to us. But they have not: they have not grasped the anger and frustration of this entire community.”

May, who lives in the picturesque Devon village of Lapford, is at the forefront of a dispute which critics say illustrates the power the government has given to academy chains across England to take major decisions over the future of schools, in effect over the heads of local communities.

Parents at Lapford community primary school, which sits in rolling countryside between Exeter and Barnstaple, have been fighting a decision by the multi-academy trust now running it to have its year 6 pupils educated eight miles away at another of its schools.

They worry that, from September, their children will face a lengthy round trip to school every day, that pupils will have to change school twice in two years and thus that the village school may become unpopular with families, putting, they fear, the school’s long-term future at risk.

They have collected a 370-signature petition against the plans – quite a feat in a village of 250 homes – and parents also have the parish council firmly behind them. But there seems little they can do, with the trust not even, it seems, legally required to consult them.

It was only in January last year that Lapford opted to join the Chulmleigh Academy Trust, a multi-academy group formed of three other small primaries and the local secondary school, Chulmleigh community college. At the time, May says, parents were enthusiastic, especially as 56-pupil Lapford had faced an uncertain financial future under Devon county council.