We have ways of making you combine

The heavily implied threat this week from Ed Balls was that he will deal with poorly performing schoolsby persuading, and if necessary compelling, the few well performing schools to take them over, or to merge. Part of the incentive will be to allow head teachers to enjoy salaries above the present £120,000 cap.

It seems something about our educational system that after 12 years, with countless bodies enquiring and recommending, and massive amounts of money having been spent, there are still so many poor schools.

The worrying thing for me is that there is so much evidence in other areas of life that when you combine an inefficient unit with an efficient one, the more efficient seldom manages to raise the efficiency of the poor one.

In educational terms, there are relatively few good schools in the public sector, if you remove grammar schools which they are also trying to dilute, that massive merger could well reduce the number. The kids of the present good schools who achieve good results would be disadvantaged, but when did socialism ever consider the individual when the good of the uniform many is poor?