We must now have an open debate about privatisation
In spite of all the political capital, funding, new buildings, glossy websites and fancy blazers, on close inspection their results overall appear no better, and in most cases are worse, than their maintained school counterparts.
On several of the government's new measures, such as progress of children eligible for free school meals, they underperform when compared with maintained schools. The much-vaunted "faster than average" improvement of many leading chains looks rather hollow when you strip out the GCSE equivalent qualifications that ministers have now decreed second-rate.
The hypocrisy of the government's position is now exposed. Schools are being cajoled and bullied out of the maintained sector based on a divisive and false prospectus, when the real English success story is the improvement, especially in deprived areas, of thousands of maintained schools.
