The hard graft of grinding out results For Mo Farah, anything was possible - all it took was "hard work and grafting." The Olympian was talking about winning gold medals, but it would also make a good motto for a Government trying to achieve its policy goals. It is the daily grind of delivering change in the most intractable areas that sets apart successful administrations. Two reports published yesterday show just how difficult that process can be. Sir Michael Wilshaw's first annual report as head of Ofsted exposes outrageous inequalities in the standard of education on offer in different parts of the country. On average, a primary school pupil in England has a 69 per cent chance of being in a good or outstanding school. Yet in some local authority areas, the figure is as high as 92 per cent; in others it is as low as 42 per cent. Such discrepancies are unacceptable and cannot be explained away by how rich or poor an area is. Oxfordshire, hardly a deprivation hot-spot, is among the weakest performers. Sir Michael now proposes to publish local authority league tables of school performance to salute the high-fliers and expose the duffers. The teachers" unions are of course apoplectic, but the provision of such information will be invaluable to parents, who will be able to use the ballot box to express their approval or disgust. For Sir Michael, the average rating of seven out of 10 should not be seen as "fair, but could do better," but as "not good enough, must do better." That is a refreshingly rigorous approach. Meanwhile, data published by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) show that its welfare-to-work programme for the long-term unemployed, which pays private providers to find work for claimants, is so far missing its targets. Only 2.3 per cent of those who have gone through the scheme have been found long-term employment; the Government's target was 5.5 per cent. Labour's claim that the programme was "worse than doing nothing" was juvenile, hardly surprising because it was made by Liam Byrne, the shadow work and pensions secretary who notoriously left a note to his Coalition successor in 2010 pointing out "there's no money left." The Government must not be deflected. The back-to-work scheme is in its infancy and because it is based on payment by results, the taxpayer gets a good deal regardless. And once again, we are getting hard information on which we can base our judgments and the Government can take the necessary action. The DWP has now given the poorly performing providers until next April to up their game, or they will be out. As with our schools, it is only constant pressure of this kind that can deliver the results the country needs.