Opinion: Haven't we been here a few times before?

The rhetoric lies within the need to "rescue" inner-city education, to address the discipline problems identified by Ofsted in its inspections of secondary schools.

The word "academies" certainly carries a ring of scholastic excellence. But while the branding may sound new and grand, such ideas actually go back a very long way. Indeed, it is just under a century since the beginning of thinking along these lines, when a training school for bad kids was established at Borstal in Kent. Of course, there had been even earlier provision of industrial schools for the deprived, and reformatories for the depraved, from the middle of the 19th century, but the Borstal idea was modelled on the best of public school education. The plan was, through residential training, to instil suitable character, values and skills in young people who had fallen off the beaten track, and thereby to give them a fresh start in life. Borstal training, established in 1908 and continuing through to the 1980s, became the generic name for an indeterminate sentence of six months to two years for persistent young offenders.