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'Coasting' Schools Given 3 Years To Shape Up

Hundreds of schools will be turned into academies unless they meet tough new targets, the Education Secretary has announced.

They will be defined as "coasting" if fewer than 60% of pupils gain five good GCSEs, and will be given three years to improve before facing intervention.

Nicky Morgan said: "For too long a group of coasting schools, many in leafy areas with more advantages than schools in disadvantaged communities, have fallen beneath the radar.

"I'm unapologetic about shining a spotlight on complacency and I want the message to go out loud and clear, that education isn't simply about pushing children over an artificial borderline, but instead about stretching every pupil to unlock their potential and give them the opportunity to get on in life."

However, while the Government claims the changes are about raising standards and expectation, teaching unions say it is part of an ideological drive to take more schools out of local authority control.

Academies were originally intended to target schools categorised as failing, but by introducing the far broader definition of "coasting" their numbers could increase significantly.

The National Union of Teachers said: "The public will see this for what it really is: a crude attack on state comprehensive education and a further step towards full school privatisation."

For 2014 and 2015, secondary schools must ensure 60% of students achieve five good GCSEs including English and Maths, or an above average proportion of students making "acceptable process".

From 2016 it will be replaced by a new measure known as "Progress 8", intended to show how much progress pupils make between the end of primary and their GCSEs.

Schools that fail to make the stipulated progress for three years will be offered expert help to raise standards and will be required to produce a clear plan for improvement. Those that fail to do so will be turned into academies.

Shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt said the measures were an "inadequate response" to the scale of the challenge of raising school standards.

He said: "No parent wants their child to be schooled in an inadequate, failing or coasting school.

"But these plans mean that it is likely that under-performing schools will simply pass from one poor provider to another, without the measures required to turn around sub-standard school leadership and poor classroom teaching."