IN delivering judgment on the country's poorest performing secondary schools, Education Secretary David Blunkett is not content with a 'can do better' summary, but today employs the injunction 'must' and announces a new scheme that threatens thousands of teachers with the sack if results do not improve quickly.

There is sure to be resistance in staff rooms and education authorities to his plan to shut and re-launch schools which fail to meet new targets of having at least 15 per cent of pupils getting five good GCSEs - Grade C or better - for three years running.

Within four years he wants a fifth of all schools achieving this standard every year, and a quarter hitting the target by 2006.

Based on last year's results, this directive extends to more than 500 schools.

It is, however, the extent to which it affects and stands to improve the lifetime opportunities of the tens of thousands of pupils passing through them which will be the criterion of those concerned with education standards.

And for that reason Mr Blunkett is right not to pussyfoot or accept blurring excuses about the influence of poor social conditions on the results of the schools with the poorest performances.

For, though it is dressed up with an edifying 'fresh start' label, this scheme is nothing more than a device for getting rid of bad teachers and bad methods - in that those in schools which are shut for failing to reach the strict new grade will be forced to re-apply for their jobs. Yet what is wrong with that - when there is proof in the GCSE results that some schools do better than others and that, for all the pleading about achievement being affected by social factors, there is proof that schools in poor areas can and do out-perform others in better-off ones?

This is not to deny social disadvantages may have some bearing on results, but they cannot be markedly harmful if, as Mr Blunkett points out, large numbers of schools in poor areas are able to overcome them.

Basically, what he is saying is the simple truth that good results come from good teaching - and that he is determined to widen its scope to all schools with this scheme to get rid of bad teaching.

And he is encouraging the process by also announcing the appointment of experienced and successful "super head teachers" who will be responsible for groups of failing schools and twin them with those who have improved.

It all may be tough, but it is right.

And just as league tables, literacy and numeracy targets and, more recently, performance-related pay ran into opposition, none of this reluctance can defy the moral yardstick that each child has a right to expect an excellent education, rather than a poor or mediocre one.

And, as this scheme focuses firmly on improving the teaching, achievements and opportunities of the strugglers, it stands eventually to eradicate the social disadvantages that are too much of a smokescreen in the education debate.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.