article: The school down the road from you that's had a bad name among parents and falling pupil numbers is taken over and turned into an academy school. The head teacher and the name will change, and there is a fair bet the discipline regime and uniform will too. Making schools independent from their local council and giving head teachers much greater leeway in whom to hire, and what to teach, isn't new. But until now, it has been applied to failing schools. The new Education Bill will extend that to "coasting schools". The government clearly intends to draw that category quite widely, which could mean many more schools than expected facing pressure to improve. The more obvious case for intervention is in local authority areas with large numbers of schools Ofsted says are less than good. In Lowestoft, Suffolk, there are four secondary schools. Only one is rated as being good, two others have just come out of special measures, and one requires improvement. Of the 20 primary schools, only eight are currently deemed to be good or outstanding. Tucked away behind streets of neat houses is Meadow Primary School. The building is a little down-at-heel, but it is surrounded by beautiful playing fields and green spaces. The school has chosen to begin a journey that hundreds more schools in England may be forced to follow in the coming years. Meadow, rated as requiring improvement, is joining the primary-only academy chain REAch2. Into this school has stepped a new head teacher, Nadia Paczuska, who was recruited through a scheme called Future Leaders. She says: "It's very isolated geographically, there is high unemployment among the parents and the area surrounding the school, it's very difficult to recruit to this area and there's a sense of low expectation of the children." In order to have enough teachers for the coming year she has recruited from Canada and Romania, and taken to social media to persuade teachers to relocate from around the UK. The local neighbourhood is mainly white, typical of Lowestoft's long-established communities. The school's standing had slipped, and there were some tense moments between parents and her predecessor, but Nadia says there is a will to change. "Most of the parents I speak to are very conscious it's not good enough, and although it had perhaps become normalised it's certainly not something the community are happy about." An appeal to the community to roll up its sleeves has led to volunteers offering to set up and run a library, and join a summer work party re-painting parts of the school. Over the holidays, the school will also be running catch-up classes for pupils. Which raises the question of whether it's Nadia's determination to lead a team improving the school that will make as much difference as becoming an academy. It is easy to make a case for intervening in schools that are underperforming. But Lowestoft also shows that simply becoming an academy, free from the management of the local council, is not a guarantee of success. Many of the pupils from Meadow Primary
summary: It is a familiar formula in many ways.