Brown plans school crackdown
Gordon Brown has called for "world-class" education achievement in Britain
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Wednesday, 31, Oct 2007 10:28
The government will close failing schools as part of "ever tougher measures" to ensure improved standards in British education, Gordon Brown has said.
The prime minister made the announcement in a speech in south-east London, where he laid out his goal to ensure all schools achieve a grade C in at least 30 per cent of GCSEs.
Mr Brown told his audience at the University of Greenwich that Britain's new ambition on education should be "nothing less than to be world-class" and outlined his "systematic plan… for eradicating failure".
The government will impose annual improvement targets on schools failing to meet the threshold, provide new incentives for teachers and create improvement networks under which good schools will assist others.
If these fail "interim executive boards" could temporarily take over schools' management while, ultimately, schools will be closed or taken over if no improvements are registered.
"This is a determined and systematic agenda to end failure. We will see it through. We will not flinch from the task," Mr Brown said.
"It's time to say not just that we will aim high and that we can no longer tolerate failure. And that it will no longer be acceptable for any school to fail its pupils… without us acting."