Better things to focus on

I HAVE some sympathy with the vice-chancellor of Oxford University when she said that universities running local schools would be a distraction.

The job of Oxford is to run a first-class university. The job of a school is to run a school.

If a doctor is failing patients you do not ask a surgeon to pick up his caseload: you dismiss said doctor and get another.

So if a school is failing then get the right head rather than hand the task to someone who is already doing a different one well.