Six Thanet schools facing closure

Six Thanet schools are part of a Government drive to improve low GCSE scores. St Georges, Hartsdown, Charles Dickens, Hereson, King Ethelberts and the Marlowe Academy score below 30% % 5 A*-C GCSEs and so will have to come up with an rescue plan within 50 days. The 638 schools will have 3 years to meet the 30% target.

My understanding is that schools with low GCSE scores would already be trying to work out what needs to be done well before such an ultimatum is given. Any competent Governing Body would already have started the process of an Improvement Plan in light of their results. They are already under tremendous bureaucratic pressure and this will only intensify this further. The Marlowe Academy is in a rather difficult situation since it has little choice but to do as best as it can without any certainty that it can possibly meet the Government targets. There are a raft of reasons why a school may be having trouble meeting the Government targets and as we can see with the Marlowe, its extremely difficult to shake off the problems. Given the Marlowe Academy is still settling in, its rather harsh to already judge it as failing and to threaten it with closure.

This seems to be a bit of a desperate attempt to look like they are doing something, without any serious consideration of the underlying problems.