The Times, amongst others, has run with the story today that the government is to give failing schools just one year to improve, or else close them. I don’t really understand how this is supposed to work… After all, with the very real threat of closure hanging over a school, it will be unable to attract better staff and more able pupils, who would presumably want a more secure future. So surely by threatening the school, the situation only gets worse… Besides which, the worst schools are generally the over-subscribed inner-city comprehensives – so this will only further cut school places, of which the government says we don’t have enough. It seems counterintuitive to say the least!

It’s one of those strange Labour ideas, like fining NHS hospitals which don’t come up to scratch, so that the hospital then has even less money with which to hire more staff and generally improve things, and hence has to cut even more corners, and things get worse. I don’t understand that logical in that either…

Maybe I’m just slow…