DO BLAIR'S ACADEMIES ACTUALLY WORK?

Since the first city academy was conceived in the mind of the Prime Minister's policy advisors, there has been a good deal more heat than light in the debate about this divisive scheme.
According to the caricature, academies are run by religious fundamentalist car dealers who force children to study Creationism and flog their dodgy old bangers in the staff room.
Recent media coverage, based on Ofsted reports and league tables, also paint a picture of the schools as continuing failures.
Poor comps were closed down and replaced with shiny glass “palaces” but the results remain just as awful as before.
Yet some of the schools have been improving, as the latest tables show.
Last year, nine academies out of the 11 which were reporting national curriculum test results for 14 year-olds were in the table of the worst 200 schools in the country.
But this year the figure fell to seven - and there were more academies reporting their test scores this time.League tables will only ever tell part of the story.
A succession of inspectors' reports has also suggested that many academies are showing signs of improvement.
The reports also revealed that several academies still had serious problems in key areas, and, crucially, exam results remain exceptionally low.
When Ruth Kelly is asked why she won't evaluate the academies which are already open before pressing on with creating 200 at a cost of £5 billion, she replies that children in the poorest areas just can’t afford to wait.
But with results showing some signs of improvement in many academies (ministers claim by three times the average rate of other schools) the question may soon become not whether the programme works, but whether it is working fast enough.