SCHOOLS in “leafy suburbs” that fail to push bright middle-class children to fulfil their potential face being taken over in a government effort to drive up standards, David Cameron announced yesterday.
The Prime Minister said that mediocre schools that do “just enough” to avoid falling below basic standards were not “good enough for my children, and shouldn’t be good enough for yours”.
Mr Cameron called on parents to “lift their aspirations” and help their children by demanding more of schools.
In a speech at a successful academy in Runcorn, Cheshire, he spoke of a “great education system” being a “driver of opportunity” along with a welfare system that “encourages work”.
Mr Cameron challenged Britain’s schools to aspire to be the “best in the world” and overtake South Korea and Finland, whose schools regularly top global league tables. Under proposed laws being debated in Parliament, even some schools rated as “good” by inspectors face being turned into academies if they have not made enough progress.
Schools will be judged by the progress they make in advancing pupils over a three-year period to ensure that the brightest children go on to achieve good GCSEs and A-levels. Those that fail to make sufficient progress will be taken over by new headteachers backed by other successful academies or sponsors.
Mr Cameron said: “Coasting schools are those where standards have been mediocre for too many years and aren’t improving quickly enough, schools where standards could and should be higher, given their intake and potential.
“They are giving children just enough to avoid falling beneath our floor standards. But frankly ‘just enough’ isn’t good enough for my children, and it shouldn’t be for yours.
“So we’re going to say to those schools: if you’re not making fast enough progress in raising standards, you have to change. And if you can’t do it yourself, you have to become a sponsored academy and welcome in people with a proven track record of running outstanding schools.”
Ofsted classed 20 per cent of schools as outstanding last year and 61 per cent were considered to be “good”. Almost one in five “requires improvement”.
Mr Cameron added: “There are schools, sometimes in quite leafy suburbs, who have got a better intake in terms of primary school children who have got good results [but] aren’t actually making the most of that opportunity and having really great results. Let’s aspire to have an education system that is among the best in the world.”
He also had a message for parents: “We have all got to lift our aspirations. We should set the aspiration high and, to be fair to teachers, asking them on their own is not enough. We have got to ask parents too to aspire to do more for their children and make sure they are being demanding of their schools and, as I know as a parent myself, demanding of their children, too.”
Mr Cameron promised to protect ben- efits for the “most disabled” people who cannot work, but refused to rule out other cuts to disability benefits. Labour has said it will not tolerate any cuts to disability benefits and has pledged to oppose cuts to tax credits.
He said that the lives of 117,000 of the country’s most troubled families have been turned around, saving up to £1.2 billion. The Government’s troubled families programme is being extended to a further 400,000 families.
The Prime Minister’s daughter, Florence, is due to start school in September, and he said it was challenging to prepare his summer-born three-year-old. The Government is reviewing rules to allow parents to delay summer-born children starting school for up to a year. Mr Cameron’s aides said he was not suggesting he had considered delaying Florence.