Does Dr Lansley really know best, with his blitz of 60 NHS targets that exclude waiting times?

Today, the Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, has launched his 60 targets for the National Health Service. This from a Secretary of State who, in opposition, said that he would be getting rid of NHS targets. But, then, this was the same politician who misled voters (and, possibly, the Prime Minister) about his true intentions for the health service. Apparently his structural overhaul plans were hidden in an obscure speech somewhere that sadly didn't make it to the Tory manifesto writing meeting or the script for Conservative candidates.

To be fair, it is hard to find a lot to disagree with in the good intentions behind targets that range from reducing mortality rates for people with several different conditions enhancing the quality of life for carers. Few would argue that the NHS should not be doing all those things. But it is the presumptiveness behind the whole exercise that is more worrying.

Mr Lansley tells us in the same breath that all these measures matter to patients, whereas they care not whether they wait four or twelve hours in A&E on a trolley, or whether they are seen and treated in 18 weeks rather than 18 months by a consultant. On both these measures, of course, he is busily undoing a huge success of the Labour government in reducing patient waiting times drastically, whilst at the same time, incidentally, significantly improving patient outcomes and the quality of many hospitals and GP surgeries.

But, no, the word 'waiting' appears nowhere in the 56 pages of targets unleashed on the NHS today. 'Doctor'
Lansley thinks we mere mortals shouldn't worry our pretty little heads about how long it takes to get seen by a doctor, just as long as they are meeting wider outcome targets. Instead of objective measurable data on waiting times, we are instead expected to rely on the NHS version of those ghastly happiness surveys that have been foisted on us by No 10. Ministers will say that the 18 week guarantee is enshrined in the NHS constitution: if this is to be more than a paper promise, it should at least form one of the 60 targets that the NHS will apparently be judged on. As the Kings Fund has said:

With the spending squeeze beginning to bite, the number of hospital inpatients waiting more than 18 weeks for treatment is already at its highest level for more than three years and waiting times for A&E and diagnostic services have also risen. As the government has said that it is opposed to targets, it now needs to be clear about how this pledge will be measured and enforced.

The Government has already weakened the A&E target so that hospitals are expected to allow waits of no longer than four hours in 95% of cases rather than 98% under Labour. Yet, even in the summer months, this less rigorous target was breached by 29 hospitals, according to the Kings Fund, while longer diagnostic to treatment waits are creeping up.

The trend since June 2010 for the proportion waiting more than 6 weeks for diagnostics has been upward and the percentage waiting more than 6 weeks has risen from 1.13 per cent in August 2010 to 2.0 per cent in August 2011 – equivalent to a rise in the number of patients from 5,800 in August 2010 to more than 11,400 in August 2011.

The Kings Fund points out that, in 2007, a third of patients had waited more than six weeks, a measure of Labour's success in cutting waits since then. How many more hospitals will ignore maximum waiting times, now that the health secretary has said he doesn't think it matters to patients how long they wait? Meanwhile, we are told in today's document that are no indicators available yet for 'ensuring that people have a positive experience of care' and that these are being 'developed'. In other words, instead of using existing waiting times data as a benchmark (even the laxer A&E data), new figures will be dreamt up and approved by the omniscient Lansley to confirm that things are getting better.

But there is a bigger problem 'focusing' on so much data, and it is echoed to a lesser extent at education. Without a clear focus on a small number of straightforward national targets, one might as well have no targets. In Labour's early years, the Treasury bombarded departments with new targets that were intended to show that the extra money on offer would be well spent. It was only when these were heavily stripped back that they had any impact. Michael Gove has recognised at education, floor targets related to national tests at 11 and GCSEs helped lift standards significantly in weaker schools, just as maximum waiting times in the NHS helped measure systemic change there. Of course, there is always some gaming with any targets, but the reality is that in both cases, most of the improvements have been real and substantial. It is hard to see the same energy being devoted to all of Lansley's 60 targets announced today, not least at a time of real terms cuts in most areas. In the end, we may not be able to see the wood from the trees.

But we don't need to worry, do we? After all, Dr Lansley knows best. Doesn't he?

Gove goes back to basics

Michael Gove's speech at the National College conference today looks like being a welcome refocusing of academies policy where it really matters. By promising scores of new primary and secondary sponsor-led academies, he is focusing more effort on the schools in disadvantaged areas that need the help most. Liz Sidwell's work as Schools Commissioner is clearly starting to bear fruit and the many frustrated academy sponsors will be pleased that the core of the programme is finally to be re-energised.

Accompanying the academies announcement is a hugely ambitious - very brave, minister, as Sir Humphrey would have set - floor target of 50% of pupils in every secondary school or academy gaining five good GCSEs including English and Maths. I welcome the great importance that Gove gives to floor targets, though ambition is only half the battle.

And it is on delivery that there will be doubts. Of course, the 2015 target results will not be known before the next election, though Gove has set himself the challenging task of all secondary schools reaching 40% by 2013, another 407 schools (or perhaps 250 after this year's exams). Nobody is a greater fan of floor targets than I am, but one reason they succeeded was because they were challenging but realistic: if too many schools don't hit these targets, it will be seen as Gove's failure. The National Leaders of Education who will be charged with delivering these ambitions will have their work cut out for them. The primary goals seem more realistic: converting the worst 200 primaries to sponsored academies next year and putting another 500 on a three year warning to improve or be converted.

Gove's briefers sneer at the levels of progress achieved under Labour. Just remember that in 1997, after 18 years of Conservative government, 50% of secondary schools - 1600 schools - did not have 30% of their pupils gaining the GCSE goal. Today fewer than 100 are in that category. The reason we made such good progress with floor targets, first introduced in 2000, was because they were ambitious but staged. Last year, Gove declared 35% to be the new target now that virtually all schools had reached 30%. That would have been a reasonable 2012 goal. Now schools which had no date for their 35% target are told that in the 2013 GCSEs they must reach 40%. A school typically needs two years to work with a GCSE cohort to achieve such goals, and adjust their curriculum and teaching. Schools should have been warned of the 2013 target before they developed their 2011-13 GCSE programmes and options.

One reason Mossbourne, which Gove cites with some justice, has been so successful is that it was able to start with a completely new intake, and mould them with everything from the excellent Year 7 mini-school environment through the disciplined teaching and learning environment admirably created by Michael Wilshaw. The danger is the too rapid moving of the goalposts will create more frustration than ambition, though it is fair also to say that there are a growing number of schools that have shown the capacity for rapid progress.

But there's a related problem. There is clearly a capacity issue in the creation of academies. The sneering briefer was at it elsewhere in the Guardian, saying that 89 sponsor-led schools over two years - by 2012 - (let's remember) was more than Labour created between 2000 and 2008. Come off it. Between 2008 and 2010, Labour was responsible for the opening of nearly 200 secondary or all-through academies, and a lot of the hard graft enabling such progress was done by Andrew Adonis before then. And before 2008, sponsors had to provide money not just support. Labour created the environment for Gove to operate in. Yet between 2010 and 2012, just 89 new sponsor-led secondary academies are apparently promised while around 200 schools may be declared 'failing' on the new 40% target in 2013. The primary goals are rightly ambitious; I wonder if the secondary promise is enough to deal with the fallout from the new targets.

The truth is that Gove did take his eye off the ball for too long, diverting huge resources in the DFE to helping outstanding schools convert, an entirely reasonable process that could be achieved in most cases simply with the £25,000 grant provided to them. Legal firms charge around £15,000 to complete the process. Instead of maintaining the pace in deprived areas, the focus was on a numbers game rather than tackling the hard cases. Today's Financial Times story by Chris Cook, on which Gove came so badly unstuck on Today, suggests that the government got its financial sums wrong - this reflects the absurd refusal by officials to road test their figures in real situations, something that seriously endangers moves to any national funding formula. The promise that the outstanding academies would have to help weaker schools is not being treated seriously either, unless the schools themselves are keen for it to happen.

Thankfully, this speech suggests that the academies programme is starting to move back on track. Let's hope that Gove's departmental resources are put fully behind these ambitious goals too, rather than duplicating the efforts of well remunerated lawyers.

This piece was updated on 16 June to reflect additional reported details. It also appears at the Public Finance blog.

People want minimum standards not just meaningless milestones

I'm not sure what planet the PM was one when he described the series of business plans published today on the Cabinet Office website as 'revolutionary'. They are anything but. Since 'targets' are a forbidden word in the coalition lexicon, we are treated to a series of 'milestones'. For the most part these appear to be events and announcements that ensure that the government introduces its policies, but very little to hold them to account on results. Of course, Labour had too many targets, but those that set minimum standards on waiting lists and exam results were very successful. Instead of such standards we now have 'people power'. We are now responsible for ensuring that our local A&E sees us within four hours or waiting times are kept short. If they aren't, it is apparently no longer the fault of ministers, however much they cut budgets or impose untried restructuring of GP services.

But that isn't the whole story. Andrew Lansley may have abandoned minimum standards in the NHS despite his relatively protected budget. But Michael Gove has not done so in education: he told local authority officers last week that he would shortly be announcing minimum GCSE standards.

It can’t be acceptable to have so many schools in which two-thirds of children fail to secure five good GCSEs. Minimum standards at GCSE have risen in recent years, in line with the increased aspirations of parents and communities. Those school leaders and local authorities who have driven the fastest improvements deserve special credit. But given the quickening pace of school improvement across the globe, I believe it’s now essential that we demonstrate that we are stepping up our reform programme. I will therefore be finalising details of new floor standards shortly, for inclusion in my forthcoming Schools White Paper. These will apply from January 2011, when we have the verified and final summer 2010 examination data.

These are likely to extend Labour's highly successful floor targets which have made schools with fewer than 30% of pupils achieving five good GCSEs including English and Maths a rarity (half of schools were in that category before 1997). At the same time, Gove is sharpening accountability in primary schools. But there seems to be little such understanding in other coalition departments. Today's rather pathetic business plans are remarkable similar to those we were expected to produce regularly in the early years of Labour government, and some look like they were written by the same civil servants, with the same managerial gobbledygook but with rather less on which to hold ministers to account. What David Cameron and Nick Clegg must recognise is that inputs without outcomes are pretty pointless.

And if they don't know it, the voters will explain it to them rather more cogently than today's business plans - in good time for the next election.

Targetless Standards

The Home Secretary, Theresa May, made great virtue of her plans to scrap policing targets yesterday. No longer would the police have to answer 999 calls quickly, or bother themselves with such trivia as patrolling on the beat or their public reputation. Instead, they should just focus on bringing down the crime rate. Her colleague, Andrew Lansley had a similar outlook a few weeks ago as he consigned an already long limit on A&E waits of no more than four hours to history, and abandoned one of the most successful public sector reforms of Labour's years, the 18 week waiting time target. Instead consultants and trusts could pretty much decide for themselves whether to be bothered about patients suffering on trolleys or facing extra months in agony awaiting treatment.

Both moves will lead to a serious decline not only in the quality of the police or health services, but particularly in the rights of victims of crime and patients. A shared insight of the Thatcher/Major and Blair/Brown years was in the importance of customers of public services and their rights, and a recognition that producer or professional interests did not always know best. The most important change Labour introduced was in delivering minimum standards (in schools, expectations of minimum GCSE or test results delivered huge improvements in the most disadvantaged areas). Now the Coalition in a zealous attack on an admittedly excessively target-driven culture has thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

In one sense, this could be said to be understandable, at least in the police. By removing public expectations, the police can be 'freed' to concentrate on other matters. Yet in saying this, May seems profoundly to misunderstand the nature of the relationship between police and public. Most crime has fallen significantly in recent years (though some violent crimes are up) so the expectation that the police treat victims and the public better has not been at the expense of this core task. But it is also the case that the police are more than crime-fighters: their presence and that of community support officers makes people feel safer, particularly at night; their willingness to respond reassuringly to victims is as important in some crimes, like burglary, as the knowledge that the criminals will be caught. This has particularly been true in community policing. What these targets said is that the police recognise that they are funded by taxpayers, and are not a law unto themselves. Gene Hunt was being consigned to the past.

Andrew Lansley seems equally in thrall to professional interests. Despite polling clearly showing that waiting times are very important to patients, he is abandoning the maximum waits and allowing consultants to adopt a 'doctor knows best' attitude that was beginning to be challenged by the success of the targets. The point is not that most medical professionals don't believe they put patients interests first; it is that the default position of too many in the medical profession is to ignore what patients say they want. Without minimum standards, patients' concerns can too often be ignored. And the frustration and anger that follows will not be good for their health - or the NHS.

So, why is Labour not making more of such profoundly regressive steps? One reason is the preference of too many leadership contenders for attacking a record they should celebrate more - or at least offer a balanced assessment. Having failed to defend our record over the last few years, it is also harder to revive it now. But the bigger reason is the failure of the party to level with voters about where it would cut and what it would protect before the election (of course the other parties blatantly lied to voters but they are now in government and getting away with their dodgy reinvention of history). Had Labour followed Alistair Darling's advice, it would be in a stronger position to challenge those policies that will harm patients, parents or victims. But even those weaknesses should not prevent the party from trying harder: unless it does so now, history will have been rewritten by the coalition. And when the 8 hour trolley waits return, and the delayed 999 responses soar, the reasons will be lost in the mists of time.

Hopi Sen has a valuable follow-up to this post here.

Labour's real educational achievement

The begrudgers in the commentariat have decided that Labour has failed the educational test. For them, there is no figure or fact that could dampen their prejudice. Yet, for more open-minded observers there is one spectacular success - the use of floor targets or minimum acceptable standards to drive up the performance of the weakest schools.

The approach was started by David Blunkett in 2000, and was revived by Ed Balls with his National Challenge. The success of the strategy depends upon real reform - with academies and trust schools - and strong leadership in secondary schools. And because the test of success - five good GCSEs including English and Maths achieved by at least 30% of pupils in a school - is a pretty tough one, even Michael Gove at his most churlish should find it hard to gainsay the achievement (though I doubt it will stop him trying).

Today's figures show that where there were 1600 secondary schools - one in two - that failed to reach this benchmark in 1997, there are only 247 today, including a drop from 439 in 2008. Remarkably, London now outperforms other regions. That is a spectacular success that is unmatched in reform programmes in other countries. The danger is that the Tories in their zealous idelological opposition to targets - even where they so clearly work - will take this pressure off schools and they will only realise its damaging impact only after it is too late. For today, though, it is time to recognise this signal achievement by headteachers and schools that has resulted from a Labour policy.

False dividing lines

I have this column in today's Independent, arguing that the 'choices' being presented on schools by Ed Balls and Michael Gove represent false dividing lines, but there are areas of real difference where both politicians should be challenged.

The Queen's Speech was all about dividing lines. The Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, suggested huge differences with his Tory shadow, Michael Gove, over their policies on school diversity. Mr Gove happily joined in, contrasting his plans with those of his opponent.

Both are happy to characterise their opposite number as the devil incarnate – Balls the arch-centraliser, undermining academy independence, or Gove the arch-privatiser, who would ignore the plight of the weakest schools. Of course, there is a grain of truth in the charges. Mr Balls has tweaked academy independence, forcing co-operation with local authorities. But he has not changed their fundamental character, and has expanded their number to 200, with 100 more due to open next year.

Mr Gove does want Swedish-style independent state-funded schools, promoted by parents and school chains. But they would be not-for-profit and he would turn the 100 worst schools into academies, a policy similar to the Balls idea of forcing change on schools where at least 30 per cent of pupils don't get five good GCSEs.

Indeed, Mr Gove would probably be able to achieve his main aims through existing
legislation introduced by Labour, which already promotes competition for new schools and is intended to empower parents unhappy with existing school choices. That explains why the main legislation he cited for a Tory government's first Queen's Speech was an extension of teachers' powers to confiscate, and an abolition of the exclusion appeals panels that send just 60 out of 8,000 excluded pupils back to their schools each year.

By exaggerating each other's differences on discipline and diversity they are misleading the public and are in danger of underestimating the weaknesses of their own policies. By doing so, they could be threatening their own success.

One big spur for recent improvement has been floor targets, including the expectation that at least 30 per cent of pupils in a school achieve five good GCSEs including English and maths. With similar challenges to primary schools, a swathe of poorly performing schools has improved. Where 1,600 secondary schools fell below the GCSE threshold in 1997, only 270 do so today. And while the pressure was most effective with poor performers, comprehensives at 70 per cent or above have doubled in the same period.

While other targets may have been crude – and with the Treasury's help, certainly too numerous – floor targets have been Labour's greatest success. Yet instead of extending this challenge, Mr Gove would abandon it, making it harder to judge the success of his policies on replacing failing schools or extending competition. This is a real dividing line between Labour and the Conservatives. And it deserves to be highlighted more than the supposed dangers of their Swedish schools policy.

Indeed, by acceding to the Tories' false dividing lines on diversity, Labour is in danger of ceding its big education successes to them. Academies are a Labour innovation. A big reason for their success – their results improve twice as fast as other schools – is their independence from local authorities.

This doesn't mean academies don't want to work with their local councils, rather that
any partnerships with them would be stronger because both parties are engaged voluntarily. Indeed some of the strongest community work I've seen has been in academies. Tony Blair recognised this when he extended foundation and introduced
trust schools, which though funded through councils, own their own buildings and employ their own staff.

But while both academies and trust schools have expanded since Mr Balls became Schools Secretary, he has also tried to force rather than empower co-operation. Instead of extending such bureaucracy, Labour should be outflanking the Conservatives in their support for independent academies. And instead of exaggerating differences, the Conservatives should start to explain how we might judge the success of their schools policy – with goals based on exam results, not just the number of new schools. Doing so would serve schools, parents and pupils much better than the false choices being served up by both parties at the moment.

Change and continuity in academies

Labour's academies policy looks safer with the Conservatives now that people like the former Schools Commissioner Sir Bruce Liddington are on board with the New Schools Network, a quasi-independent organisation set up by shadow schools secretary Michael Gove to help him realise his policy of creating more independent state schools.

Of course, I hope that Labour can win the next election. But if, as the polls suggest, the Tories do win through, it is vital that there is continuity as much as change in what happens in the education system. In 1997, Labour took this view not only with testing and inspection, but also with the introduction of foundation schools and grammar school ballots.

Even so, it is going to be a tall order seeing the large number of new schools that the Conservatives envisage being delivered quickly and, more importantly, successfully. I am quoted elsewhere warning that 'cults and sects' may be the first to embrace any laxness in the safeguards for new schools, and that the realisable demand from groups of parents directly may be more limited than is assumed. There may also be justifiable demand from mainstream Muslims and Catholics, but the Government will need to balance demand with fair safeguards, if their policy is not to be hijacked, and while this is something Gove realises, it may not be as straightforward as the Opposition think.

But this doesn't mean they should be unambitious. However, there are two issues that the Tories need to address if they are to make a success of their plans. What I also told the TES is that pressure from faiths or sects means the Tories will need to have a much more hands-on position driving and encouraging secular demand, for example by developing the sort of school chains that are envisaged also by Ed Balls in his recent schools white paper. This is where the new network could be useful in opposition, though in government the Tories need to work more closely with established and trusted organisations that have helped deliver trusts and academies in practice. Whether they need to introduce profit-making is a moot point: Swedish and American profit-making entrepreneurs say they do. But Gove may find it far harder to sell his plans politically in the UK environment, with a strong tradition of not-for-profit independent schools than in Sweden, where there was no such tradition. And many American states prohibit profit in charter schools.

The second issue is difficult for any opposition: to recognise where and how Labour's reforms have succeeded. There have been substantial and genuine improvements in some inner city areas since 1997, as a direct result of a much more business-like and qualifications-focused attitude in schools - and a big improvement in the quality of teachers. Of course, too many targets can create their own problems. But the combination of floor targets - like the 30% minimum five goood GCSEs in the National Challenge - and tough internal targets within schools has driven substantial improvement where English and Maths are included. Unless the Conservatives expect similar ambition with their academies, they will not achieve the further boost in improvement they need.

And that may mean spending a bit more time getting it right rather than focusing on the numbers of new schools, especially when replacing failing schools or supporting new parent-led alternatives. Equally, those trusted organisations will need to help sell the benefits of being an academy to good maintained schools, especially if money is tight and there are no incentives. Similar strictures apply in primaries, more so given their size, where the majority of any new schools will be established, and the Tories need to be more vocal in resisting the efforts of some academics to return them to the secret garden of differential expectations and limited focus on the basics that too often prevailed in the seventies and eighties.

Despite all the hoopla in the press, most of whose editors have little idea what is really happening in most state schools and don't report real improvements when they occur, Gove's policy is far more a continuation of Tony Blair's and Labour's reforms (which in turn embraced many of Ken Baker's reforms) than either party would care to admit. (True, academies have lost some freedoms under Balls, but the fundamentals are still there.) And that continuity would be a good thing for schools and their students.

5pm UPDATE: I've also blogged on this theme at the Progress website.

These are genuinely good GCSE results

That half of all 15-year old students now get five good GCSEs including English and Maths - a 2.1% point increase on last year - should be a huge boost for the Government's secondary school reform programme.

To put that in some context, it means that 50% more pupils reach this standard - a much tougher one than the 5 GCSEs in any subject that nearly 70% now get - when it includes both English and Maths - than did so in 1997. If you doubt this is a tough target, look at the separate data for each of those basic subjects. It particularly reflects the strength of two key Government reform programmes, Academies and the National Challenge (together with earlier floor targets), but can also be attributed to the school-level targets associated with virtually all secondaries becoming specialist schools.

Traditionalists might reflect that with O levels, barely a quarter of pupils reached this standard and both English and Maths were not required in the measure. And the Conservatives should understand that their independent schools programme will not succeed in achieving a similar uplift unless it is accompanied by a tough accountability regime, where schools set challenging internal targets and the Government has minimum expectations like the National Challenge.

Today's results are a reflection of the genuine transformation for the better that has occurred in secondary schools and their culture. It should be a cause for celebration. But I wouldn't hold my breath.

Avoiding poverty of ambition

True to form, the National Union of Teachers has hit out at government plans to help 638 schools to set their sights at 30% or above of their pupils gaining five good GCSEs including English and Maths. The NUT attacked a similar move in 2000 by David Blunkett to get all schools above 20% and then 25% in any subject (virtually all schools have met that goal). The government has rightly divided the schools into those likely to meet the goal soon, those with a good chance of doing so, and those where radical action is needed. This, to the NUT, is a process of vilification.

The NUT points out that some if the schools are rated 'good' by Ofsted. And they get good 'value-added scores'. But neither of these measures should be enough on their own. When Ofsted rates a school good or satisfactory, it means that it has the capacity to make good progress; it is unlikely that many of those needing radical action fall into this category. Indeed the government's sub-division of the 638 recognises that some have such capacity: the target is for 2011 not the 2007 figures available today.

The NUT are onto something about contextualised value added (CVA, the government's preferred value-added measure), but not the point they think. CVA is a hugely complex exercise in excuse-making which makes allowance for dozens of social factors. By avoiding any minimum standard of success, it has allowed schools to avoid addressing the need for greater ambition. It does not, for example, give any extra credit to schools for its grades in English and Maths, so it is not surprising there is less alignment than their should be.

The government and Ofsted should ensure greater alignment, and CVA should be changed to credit good English and Maths GCSEs properly. But no student is going to go to an employer with a couple of GCSEs demanding a job on the grounds that his or her school has a decent CVA score. Benchmarks like this - or floor targets - have been the unsung educational success story of this government. Ministers must stick to their guns.

The case for league tables

I have a piece in today's Independent defending league tables (it is not online):

Since their introduction in the early Nineties, the teaching unions have bemoaned the ‘damaging impact’ of school league tables. But, as the clamour for their abolition grows again, the unions’ case is weaker than ever.

They initially complained that an absence of context made the tables unreliable. Yet, as the Government added improvement indices, average point scores and an assessment of the value added by individual schools, they were not appeased.

All of which suggests that the real reason they don’t want parents and the public to have comparative information about schools is that they have something to hide.

Yet, tables have been a force for good. They have helped to drive up standards, alongside inspections and national testing. When the first primary results were
published school-by-school in 1995 they exposed those that were coasting, encouraging real improvement in the 3Rs.

The sophistication of today’s data now means that schools’ performance is compared with the achievement of similar schools. Fischer family trust and value added data enable teachers to set challenging but realistic goals for every pupil in all their subjects. The best schools involve parents in this process.

Tables encourage scrutiny and openness. If this information were not public, the pressure to succeed would be weakened. Failings would not only be hidden from parents and the wider community, but from many school governors.

Tables can also support public policy goals with minimal bureaucracy. Last week, Lord Adonis announced that information on pupils achieving level 6 and 7 in the Key Stage 3 tests would be published to encourage attention for gifted and talented students. Ruth Kelly’s decision as education secretary to include English and Maths scores in the preferred GCSE measure has rightly focused more attention to the basics.

And tables are also important in a culture of increasing freedom of information. Teachers, who are public servants, should be so accountable. We rightly expect government and its agencies to publish increasing amounts of information about their workings. It would be intolerable to hold publicly-funded schools to a lower
standard.

Equally, it is unrealistic to expect that newspapers should not publish the results. Most now celebrate fast improvers as much as they highlight the lowest achievers. Rather than trying to abolish the tables, their union critics should be encouraging their members to make the most of the wealth of information they contain to improve standards for every child.

And, for those, including the BBC, who report that a fifth of schools are still failing to meet Gordon Brown's challenging target that 30% of pupils in every school should get five good GCSEs, including English and Maths, two points.

1. Given that the target was set after pupils sat the exams on which schools are being judged for today's league tables, how can they still be failing to meet a target that they didn't then have?

2. By the same token, half of schools missed this target in 1997. Why is that not reported?

Gordon's targets

I have a piece in today's Independent, arguing that Gordon Brown was right to set tough targets last week, but setting out some of the things he and Ed Balls need to do to meet them. You can read my article here.