New head, new buildings, more money is what Tim and Antonia are suggesting. This seems to be a solution with a pretty good record of success, after all.

You still have not offered an alternative. What would you do to raise standards in these schools? How would you ensure that the kids in these schools are given the life chances they need and deserve? What practical policies do you offer to riase standards in hard to shift schools?

If Academies are not the answer what is? Have you visited any existing Academies and spoken to the staff and students?

As to the results of C of E schools, there is as I understand a healthy debate in the academic literature on whether the better performance of the kids is actually anything to do with the faith or rather whether it is an artefact of governance, resources, governor time, and the tendency to have parents who are committed enough to getting a good education for their children to be prepared to pretend to be a Christian for long enough to get little Jocasta in, so I’m not at all convinced that comparative statss should be taken at face value.

through surrendering control over aspects of academic policies to nutcases various.

The issue isn’t whether or not city academies work, although it has to be said the evidence is mixed. The issue is whether making them work is the best way of using the money available (whether they are an effective use of resources) and whether it is acceptable to surrender control of the education of our most deprived children to anyone with the cash and in search of a peerage. Both your answer and that of the Committee are Lib-demmery - wait for the evidence, review in due time, etc. The performance in isolation of academy schools is not as good as the government proclaims and no evidence has been adduced or could be, given the absence of a control, for the importance of outside governance in changing these schools. My view is not only are they empirically unproven and without prospect of being so, but that there are also good Labour reasons for suspicion of them as an effective use of resources.

It isn’t enough to retreat into a barren empiricism and say that we must wait till further evidence becomes available: there are some things we do not regard it as incumbent upon us to await further evidence on before deciding whether or not they are things that Labour governments should do (we do not, for example, believe in lowering the minimum wage).

It is a complete tragedy that the government is insisting that a fresh start for some of our most deprived schools has to be associated with taking them out of democratic control and handing them over to Church or Mammon.

Obviously these schools are likely to benefit from all the resources that have been thrown at them: no-one is doubting that. WHat people are doubting is whether (i) this is the best way of spending the finite resources available for the improvement of schools in deprived areas, and (ii) it is necessary or should be acceptable that the way to do this is

I simply make the point that rather than criticise the exisiting Academies give them time to see if they really work. I argue - pompously or otherwise - that the Common’s Education Cttee were right to insist on a more extensive surevy of the benefits of Academies before they are expanded.

You may well be right and I may not know what I am talking about but I would be interested in your suggestions as to how we shift schools that have for years been characterised by poor performance and under-achievement.

Over the same period, as the graph shows, GCSE results for the local authority have tracked steadily upwards at a rate considerably faster than the national average, a point made not without pride by the local authority, here (”Progress since 2001 has been at over twice the national rate. The borough’s results jumped a massive 5% this year alone.“), and by the borough’s ruling Labour Group in their manifesto for re-election earlier this year (”We’re determined that by 2010, Haringey’s GCSE results – already improving faster than the national average – will be better than the national average“). The results at Greig do not in any sense bear out the notion that the Academy model is the most effective, let alone the only possible, way of improving school results in deprived areas.

That said, I don’t know if academies are the solution either, and something about the idea of private businesses running schools gets my back up no end (the same way that talk of students as ‘customers’ irritates). I wish Peers all the best…