A Tory education minister overrode his civil servants and ignored dismal results to hand over more schools to one of his favourite private companies.

The company, called Prospects Services, responded with yet more school failures.

I found the evidence that ministers favoured the failing firm through Freedom of Information requests. The documents show one of Michael Gove's central educational policies isn't working.

His "academy chain" plan is actually a road to privatisation - one already jammed up with a car crash.

Education Secretary Gove rapidly expanded Labour's "academy schools" programme. But the majority of Gove's academies are "unsponsored" - they are cut loose from local education authorities but haven't found a "sponsor," typically a pompous religious group or some oily Tory-linked businessman, to look after them.

The unsponsored academies are the direct responsibility of Gove's Department for Education (DfE).

The DfE knows it can't cope with direct control of all these thousands of schools.

The solution is to encourage new academy chains to expand and take control.

As a pamphlet by PM David Cameron's former education adviser James O'Shaughnessy made clear last year, the Tories want to lever in private companies to run these chains, because the existing ones are already overstretched.

It's a complicated map taking schools to privatisation. As O'Shaughnessy said: "Chains show that a proper market in state schooling is at last starting to develop."

The unsponsored academies are not designed to succeed. They are just waiting to be linked to the academy chains.

Prospects Services wants some of this business. Bromley-based Prospects has a £76 million turnover from government education and training contracts, many running Ofsted inspections.

In 2010 the firm became sponsor of Gloucester Academy, a 758-pupil secondary school. Tory Education Minister Nick Gibb visited the school to praise the "quality of the leadership and the educational vision" of Prospects.

They were perfectly placed to become an academy chain.

Then things started going wrong.

In March 2012 Ofsted inspectors said the new school was "inadequate" - this is especially embarrassing for Prospects as it runs Ofsted inspections itself.

In August 2012 Prospects managing director Vincent McDonnell sent emails and letters to then education minister Lord Jonathan Hill asking for an "urgent meeting."

McDonnell was complaining after education officials told him that "Prospects are currently 'paused' with regard to further sponsored academy projects because of concerns over their performance in the open Gloucester Academy."

McDonnell was angry about this "unhelpful" attitude. He complained this was "having a negative impact" on "the commercial operation of our company" - as if Prospects' profits were more important than its dismal performance.

McDonnell pretended his firm had done no wrong and blamed its poor performance on the pupils.

McDonnell said the poor Ofsted inspection was down to "underachieving" pupils. He complained that Prospects would be "better placed now" if it had "not taken on the responsibility" for the Gloucester Academy.

You might think the civil servants were right. Why should a poorly performing firm get more schools?

Lord Hill thought otherwise. He met McDonnell and Leslie Stephens of Prospects last October. The "feedback" note says: "Lord Hill wants to progress these deferred/on hold Prospects projects ASAP. Lord Hill's view was that unless we have very strong reasons not to do so we should now approve these and start afresh with Prospects on a case-by-case basis."

Lord Hill ordered his staff to give the firm more schools, but his civil servants are clearly unhappy - especially as Prospects failed to mention a second, and equally damning Ofsted inspection that had taken place last October, just before its representatives met Lord Hill.

One official wrote that "what Vincent and Leslie failed to mention was that Gloucester Academy was inspected last week" and "judged to have serious weaknesses and require significant improvement."

The officials were unsure if "this will cause Lord Hill to think again."

McDonnell must have known about the second bad Ofsted inspection. He is a governor of Gloucester Academy as well as Prospects director. Another civil servant said of the new inspection report: "I'm very surprised they [Prospects] didn't mention it either in the meeting with Lord Hill or when I spoke to them afterwards."

Prospects hid its poor performance from the minister. The government's desperation to promote academy chains might mean he was willing to be deceived.

But no amount of bluster could make the firm any better. After Lord Hill's intervention in its favour, Prospects was given five more academies. However, this February Ofsted found that one of these Prospects schools, Bexhill Academy, was "inadequate," placing the large secondary into "special measures."

This June inspectors returned and declared that Prospects' "improvement plan is not fit for purpose" at the school.

The government has a theory. Local education authorities, with all their democracy, smell of socialism.

Schools must be freed from them and handed over to market-oriented organisations. Profit-making firms must be allowed in so all schools can experience this "liberation."

That's the theory. The practice is crap firms like Prospects get handed school after school, no matter how badly they perform.

Prospects is special because it proves the government's privatisation programme is flawed on a second front as well.

It's one of the "prime" contractors on the Work Programme. It won a £50m contract to run the scheme for the jobless in south-west England, even though Ofsted found some of its existing employment schemes unsatisfactory.

Prospects soon ran in to trouble here as well. Last year there was a national scandal when 80 of its trainees were bussed to London and left to sleep under a bridge before they worked, unpaid, as stewards at the Queen's jubilee celebrations on the Thames.

According to the latest figures Prospects is one of the worst performing firms on a scheme, with just 7 per cent of the trainees who have been on the scheme for a year getting a "job outcome."

Follow Solomon Hughes on Twitter @Sol_Hughes_Writer