The Acadamies

The Academies, Blair's flagships, have been the subject of study by the think-tank Civitas.

The majority of academies do not publish their results, as they are independent state schools and exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. They are, however , inspected by Ofsted, and almost half of those inspected recently were no better than adequate in standard.

The Civitas study found that the schools were very interested in achieving good grades, however, but disappointingly boosted the marks by encouraging students to study easier and vocational courses, rather than the more academic.We had been told that the academies had improved GCSE grades at twice the rate of "ordinary" secondary schools, although it was admitted that many had been reformed failing schools and so started from a lower base. (In 2008-09 the academies produced students of whom 36% gained five decent GCSE passes, including maths and English. Other schools nationally achieved 48%.)

The Tories have also made a policy emphasis on academies, so this must be a concern for them. The academies were supposed to be "models of excellence", and so must be thought to some extent failing this.

The challenge is how to achieve independence without dilution of standards. The answer might be to adopt the "Swedish" approach, as advocated by Michael Gove, with extremely local control and full publication or knowledge of what is going on.