Failing schools given three years to reform

Struggling secondary schools will be warned this week that they face closure if they fail to produce a convincing turnaround plan.

The Government will ask the 638 schools failing to achieve its minimum standards to submit action plans by the start of the summer holidays next month. They will have until 2011 to meet the target of at least 30 per cent of pupils getting at least five GCSEs at grade C or above or face "formal intervention". That could result in closure, merger or transformation into independent academies.

Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, said closure would be a last resort if schools failed to respond to the additional funding and support available. "The goal over the next three years is to get that 638 down to zero, to get every school to the basic standard," he told Sky News.

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