The EducationGuardian reports that Andrew Adonis, the schools minister, has argued that ‘exam results from 21 new academies vindicates the idea of ‘independent’ state schools.’ If you’re only interested in raw exam results then that claim would seem to be vindicated, with apparently all 21 academies now achieving the national ‘floor target’ that a minimum 25% of pupils should get five or more good GCSEs. The academies’ average performance is now 40%, whereas 18 of the 24 schools they replaced were below that ‘floor target’.