Faustino. Getting someones nom de plume, (or should that be nom de finger?)is a small beer error by my standards - I am of a maturity that is nigh to forgetting my own real name.

Bear in mind that the UK document advocates 'setting' not 'streaming', they are very different. Setting allows, for example,for a child to be in a 'high' set for maths but a 'lower' set for English. Streaming does not allow that to happen. Internal organisational matters such as this are relevant to any sort of school. That is the crunch point: the UK document is talking about competition between STATE schools.
I sympathise with the idea that we should not hang around waiting for full info before over ruling the Education Establishments grip on our childrens schooling, but if schools are to be 'rated' according to their OUTPUT results then the INPUT quality must be known as well. A school should be judged by the amount of educational 'value adding'not just the output. Ranking by output alone is also one of the reasons that the ranking of universities is flawed. If a university has a 'good' reputation then the higher performing school leavers will tend to apply to and will get in. Another institution with a less 'good' reputation will not take in as large a % of high achievers. To then judge those institutions purely on output is nonsense. It is also a case of positive feed back.
As a died in the wool state school man, I want to see measures of valid value added data published for all schools. Lets level up the playing field!

Actually, Kevin, there is plenty of evidence to show that your arguments are flawed; namely:

- Many of the schools that were forced into becoming Academies were actually improving BEFORE their enforced change - see the Education Guardian for more details
- Jonathan Kozol has written about the research showing that school "choice" only increases the gap between the advantaged and the disadvantaged - see his latest book "Shame of a Nation"
- There is plenty of evidence to show that using standardised testing as a means of assessing student performance (AND school performance) is flawed and open to corruption.