Weak schools converted to academies

Michael Gove, the education secretary, has announced that the 200 weakest primary schools in England will be turned into 'academies' next year. Academies operate differently to schools in so far as they are controlled internally as opposed to being controlled by the local authority. They can also set their own pay scales for teachers.

Those primary schools that will be turned into academies are those that have fallen below the government's minimum standards for five years. The standards require at least 60% of pupils to achieve a basic level – level four – in English and maths by the age of 11, and also require them to have made at least average progress between the ages of seven and 11.Authorities with particularly large numbers of struggling primaries will be identified for urgent collaboration with the Department for Education, Gove said.

Speaking to the National College for School Leadership's annual conference in Birmingham, he warned that the government could intervene where authorities were "recalcitrant" or tried to "stand in the way of improvement".

He said: "Wherever possible, we want to find solutions that everyone can agree on, as we have done with the vast majority of the secondary schools that will become academies next year."

But Christine Blower, the general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said "compelling" schools to turn into academies would not improve standards.

"This is a totally unacceptable experiment to undertake with our primary school children," she said. "Since last September, few primaries have voluntarily converted to academy status.

"Schools value and need the additional support they receive from their local authority and neighbouring schools," Blower added. "Simply closing schools and replacing them with academies will not have the impact sought, but will cause a great deal of confusion and distress for parents, pupils and staff."

Gove has also said that he would be setting tougher exam targets for Britain's worst-performing schools. By 2015, he expects every secondary school in England to be achieving the current national average of at least 50% of pupils achieving five A*-C grades at GCSE, including English and maths. If not, the school will be regarded as underperforming.

"To compete with the best in the world, we have to raise our expectations not just once, but continuously," Gove said.

"In Singapore, more than 80% of young people taking O-levels now achieve five passes – the equivalent of C grades at GCSE. In South Korea, an incredible 97% of students graduate from high school.

"There is no reason, if we work together, that by the end of this parliament every young person can't be educated in a school where at least half of students reach this basic academic standard."

Gove told the conference that England "still had one of the most segregated school systems in the world, with the gap between the best and the worst wider than in almost any other developed nation".

To "liberate thousands from the narrow horizons which have limited mankind's vision for centuries", teachers and everyone involved in education would have to "work harder", he said.

"My moral purpose in government is to break the lock which prevents children from our poorest families making it into our best universities and walking into the best jobs," he added.