Delegates told a conference the controversial scheme could be the “final nail” in the coffin for many schools and was a major threat to village life.

Members of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) said small rural schools are the “glue” that bind communities together, allowing young parents to carry on living where they grew up.

Sutcombe primary school in Devon was earmarked for closure last month after dwindling pupils and the failure to join a federation made it unviable.

There also fears for the future of Farway Church of England primary, in Farway near Honiton, after pupil numbers dropped.

“Speaking at the ATL annual conference in Liverpool, Joyce Walters, a teacher from Devon, said the “cost of forced academisation” could be “the final nail for many rural schools that means that they will no longer be able to stay open.”

She said: “Like many churches, chapels, barns, pubs and shops, too many rural schools are now large, beautiful and – very often in Devon – second homes.

“Rural schools are the sticking glue and the epicentre of rural communities.

“Because the parents of those children work, play and shop in those areas, where they may well have grown up themselves and have probably extended family.

“And they need to be able to stay there and they need a rural school in that area.

“Help rural communities and their children and their schools across our very beautiful green and pleasant land to continue to thrive and prosper well into the future.”

Since 2011, primaries at Pyworthy, Dalwood and West and East Putford – all in Devon – have closed.

All schools will be forced to become academies – or be in the process of converting – by 2022, meaning local authorities will no longer run them.

ATL said multi-academy trusts will be unwilling to take on rural schools because they are expensive and inconvenient to run, meaning some may have to close.

This would mean young families moving out of villages, leading to the closure of pubs and shops, union members warned.

ATL passed a motion yesterday to campaign to protect rural schools across the country and maintain their funding.

Proposing the motion, Trevor Cope from Devon said he recently saw four local rural schools close, causing those villages to have “no heart”.

He said losing a school can cause the “sorry death of a village” and causes “untold damage” to communities.

He added: “The first thing that happens, is the shop closes, and that’s the post office as well.

“There’s no children to drop in for sweets and no parents to pop into the post office to post letters.

“The younger people move out of the village because they have to. The pub then closes. This is a rural crisis.”

Ian Courtney, chairman of the National Governors’ Association (NGA) and of a federation of schools in West Devon, said there was “no evidence” that academies would improve standards.

He said there were potentially issues over teachers’ pay following the end of collective bargaining and was not happy about the prospect of scrapping parent governors but said he disagreed with predictions that rural schools would close simply because of the programme.

He added: “I would take the opposite view with the caveat that they must be properly managed.

“I chair a federation of small schools – having a village school is one of the joys of rural life – and we are able to mitigate costs by centralising services, boring back room stuff, maximising what we spend on teachers.

“Partnership between schools is incredibly powerful way to protect rural schools. You cannot try to save every little school for the sake of it.”

The conversion to academies is a mixed picture across Devon and Cornwall.

Torbay is among the top five in England for the proportion of schools awarded academy status.

At 67%, it comes behind just Darlington (70%), Bromley (71%), Bournemouth (78%) and North East Lincolnshire (79%) for conversions.

Torbay Council’s executive member in charge of schools, Julien Parrott, has said he believes schools are “embracing the freedom” that academisation provides.

In Cornwall the conversion rate is almost double the national average, at 46% of the county’s 278 schools.

In Plymouth, the figure drops, but is still higher than average at 32% of the city’s 96 schools.

But in Devon, the conversion rate is just 24%, with 87 of the county’s 363 primary and secondary schools adopting the model.

Education secretary Nicky Morgan said schools are more likely to produce better results as academies, with multi-academy chains using expertise to pull up those which are performing badly.

However, teaching unions have said there was “no evidence” to support the government’s claims.

Union leaders and Labour MPs have pledged to work with leading Tories on Conservative-held county councils who last month also voiced disquiet at the plans.

One of them was Melinda Tilley, the cabinet member for education at Oxfordshire County Council – which includes the Prime Minister’s Witney seat.

She said: “It means a lot of little primary schools will be forced to go into multi-academy trusts and I just feel it’s the wrong time, in the wrong place, for little primary schools to be forced into doing this.

“I’m afraid there could be a few little village schools that get lost in all of this.”