The 600 worst-performing secondary schools in the country face being taken over by the best or shut down completely under a new drive by the Prime Minister to improve classroom standards.

 

Gordon Brown laid out his vision for education, saying that he wanted to raise educational aspirations across the board to ensure 100 per cent success for young people and close the social-class gap in school attainment.

 

His priorities include the introduction of cash incentives worth about £10,000 to attract teachers into the toughest schools and a drive to increase the take-up of apprenticeships. Although he recognised improvements in schools in the past decade, the Prime Minister said that there was still much to do. “This is a determined and systematic agenda to end failure,” he said. “We will see it through. We will not flinch from the task.”

 

Mr Brown raised the bar for school performance. Previously the Government expected a minimum of 25 per cent of pupils to get five GCSEs at grade C or above. Now schools will be expected to ensure that at least 30 per cent of pupils do so.

 

The number of schools below this level has declined from 1,600, when Labour came to power in 1997, to 670 today, but this was still too many. Schools that fall below this threshold will be given annual improvement targets. The worst among them may face “complete closure or takeover by a successful neighbouring school in a trust or federation, or transfer to academy status, including the option of takeover by an independent school”.

 

Full Story here : http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/e...icle2779587.ece

But the problem is not just with the schools, many of the areas these schools are in are deprived and the many of the parents of these kids don't expect their kids to do well, or even value a school education. maybe some of these schools have become complacent as they are not pushed by the parents, but at the end of the day the whole area needs an attitude change to make them all believe they can achieve it, and anything that does this can only be welcomed surely