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Education secretary targets schools that have fallen below the government’s minimum standard, with the weakest 200 being converted from September 2012 The 200 weakest primary schools in England will be placed under new management by 2012, the education secretary Michael Gove will say on Thursday. It is the most direct interference in primary schools by a government that has, so far, been mainly focused on intervention on secondary schools. The education secretary wants as many schools as possible to become academies in the belief that the system has transformed secondary education and could do the same for primary schools. The weakest 200 primary schools will be converted from September 2012. The announcement coincided with reports that an accounting blunder by the Department of Education has left many existing academies with more funding than they are entitled to, prompting Gove to claim that the coalition government had inherited a “flawed system” from Labour. Gove made the case for extending academy status to primaries to raise standards. He said the process could involve “significant change” in terms of staffing, and in some cases the headteacher would be removed. “Sometimes, yes, the headteacher will go, but in other circumstances it will be the case the staff will remain the same but the leadership that’s provided by another school will help those who have been struggling for far too long to improve,” he told BBC Breakfast. “It’s not intended to be anything other than a helping hand upwards for the staff in the school, but above all the children, who have to be our first concern.” This “sponsored academy” programme is in addition to the 1,200 schools that have already applied to convert to academy status (“converter academies”). Gove is to target those that have, for five years, fallen below the government’s “minimum floor standard” (less than 60% of the children reaching a basic level in English and Maths at 11, and where children make below-average progress between seven and 11). He said: “Every year we ask young people to sit tests at the end of primary school in English and mathematics. These are schools where more than 40% of students haven’t been getting to the right level, and they haven’t been getting to that level for more than five years. “So yes, these schools will know themselves the difficulties that they’ve been in, and starting from 2012, from September 2012, these schools will be converted into academies.” He insisted the change would “strip out bureaucracy” for teachers and give them more freedom to vary the school day and change the curriculum. “Ultimately the people who make schools better are teachers not bureaucrats and that’s what the academy model incarnates,” he added. Local authorities with particularly large numbers of struggling primaries will be identified for urgent collaboration with the Department for Education. On the basis of 2010 results, there are about 1,400 primary schools below the primary minimum floor standard. Of those, about 500 have been below the floor for two or three of the last four years. A further 200 have been below standard for the last five years and 120 of those have been below the floor for more than a decade. The funding of academies came under scrutiny as it emerged that an accounting blunder by the Department of Education has left many academies with more funding than they are entitled to, leaving the prospect of many having large sums of money “clawed back”. Gove blamed “mistakes” by local authorities for the overpayments which saw some academies receive hundreds of thousands of pounds they were not entitled to. The Financial Times reported the error was particularly pronounced in Hampshire, where academies had been given an extra £300 per pupil, worth around £300,000 a year to the average secondary academy. Pressed on the report on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, Gove said initially he found the report “a bit perplexing”, before conceding there was a problem. “There have been individual mistakes made by local authorities in the calculation of their section 251 returns,” he said. Asked whether officials in the Department for Education had been responsible for any of the mistakes, he replied: “Not that I am aware of.” But pressed again, he said they had been working with a “flawed” system inherited from the former Labour government. “What we are actually working with is a funding system which was designed by the last government which is flawed,” he said. “There is a problem with the financing of all schools because of the funding mechanism that was designed by the last government.” He added: “Every year money is clawed back in this way.” Gove will use a speech in Birmingham to make the case for academy primary schools, citing the shift of political and economic power to Asia. “We have just suffered the worst financial crisis since 1929,” he will say. “Our economy is weighed down by a huge debt burden. Europe has major problems with debt and the euro. “Meanwhile there is a rapid and historic shift of political and economic power to Asia and a series of scientific and technological changes that are transforming our culture, economy and global politics. “If we do not have a school system adapting to and preparing for these challenges – a school system that is not only adapting to the amazing revolution of iTunesU, whereby Harvard and Oxbridge publish their most valuable content free, but is also able to adapt to the unknown revolutions ahead — then we will face even worse crises in the years ahead. Justifying his intervention, Gove will state “there is only so much you can do between 11 and 16,” arguing that the fate of a pupil may well be settled by the time they reach secondary school. “The education debate in this country has not confronted reality. Education systems across the world are improving faster than England. We have to set our sights higher. We should no longer tolerate a system in which so many pupils leave primary school without a good grasp of English and maths, and leave secondary school without five good GCSEs. We want all parents to have a choice of good local schools. “Evidence shows that the academy programme has had a good effect on school standards. Heads and teachers should run schools and they should be more accountable to parents instead of politicians. We must go faster and further in using the programme to deal with underperforming schools.” Michael Gove Primary schools Schools Education policy Patrick Wintour Hélène Mulholland guardian.co.uk