Labour’s solution to failing schools – re-open them as new failing schools

Today the Government has announced its list of 638 failing schools across the country. Their plan appears to be to shut them down and re-open them as academies. That’s all very well, but as the only two academies that exist in Sheffield are on the list of failing schools I’d been intrigued to know what their solution is for them.

To be fair to Park Academy and Springs Academy, I think it is unfair of the Government to label them as failing when they have only existed for a year or so. But as you glance down the list across the country it does include a number of other academies, technology colleges, specialist schools and many other educational experiments from Labour’s decade in power.

I’m all for revamping schools and giving them better buildings and facilities, but that alone is not enough to make it in to a good school. The government has been labelling schools as failing for years and little seems to have changed. It’s about time they realised that simply relabelling a school and building it with private money is not suddenly going to improve the way people are educated.