It's the teachers, stupid

Last week Barack Obama's new education secretary, Arne Duncan, acknowledged that charter schools are not an automatic passport to success. He had to. A new report from Stanford University has found that, on average, students perform less well in charter schools than in mainstream ones.

This is a major change of tack from a man who used the charter model extensively to tackle Chicago many failing schools, and a blow to one of Obama's central education strategies. It''s also a BIG wake-up call to all our politicians who still believe that creating more academies -- very similar to charter schools -- will automatically mean educational success.

As Duncan acknowledges: "What distinguishes great charters is ... the presence of an educational strategy built around commonsense ideas, more time on task, aligned curricula, high parent involvement, great teacher support and strong leadership."

In short, good teachers, heads and parents doing good things.

It's not rocket science....why don't we stop meddling with school structures and just do that with the schools we've already got?