The latest GCSE results in the city were a disgrace.

It is just not acceptable that the city should tumble 28 places in the national league tables.

City council chiefs must be tearing their hair out – they have to attract new businesses and new people to the city.

But results like these, which sees the city ranked 130th out of 150, will not help one little bit.

Businesses considering relocating to Peterborough want to be reassured the city can provide a workforce that is skillful and educated and newcomers want to know there are decent schools for their kids.

So where has it all gone wrong?

A variety of reasons have been put forward for this poor performance. It would seem the upheaval caused by the secondary schools review, which meant the closure of several schools, and the influx of migrant children are the favourites.

But isn't this all beginning to sound a little bit like "the dog ate my homework''?

Are they reasons or excuses?

Peterborough is not alone in having to deal with a high immigrant population.

And, yes, no doubt the secondary schools review did cause some uncertainty, but that was foreseeable and should have been managed to ensure the most important people – the pupils – didn't suffer.

Everybody knew the school closures were coming. The highly-paid head teachers and council education officers should have had plans to deal with any problems.

For some reason the Government has not released the individual results of the schools which have closed, so we can't know for sure how they performed.

We do know that the city council gave two of the schools earmarked for closure – Bretton Woods and Walton – more than £300,000 in 2004 to recruit and train staff to avert a teaching crisis.

Staff at both those schools which were replaced by the Voyager and those at John Mansfield, Hereward and Deacon's, (replaced by the Thomas Deacon Academy) have been praised subsequently for their loyalty. And rewarded – most of them got jobs at the new schools.

So if staff stayed loyal, why did the closures cause so many problems?

Teachers are professionals and like to take the kudos that comes their way for having such an important job in society. But it appears the class of 2007 has been let down.

Hand on heart, how many teachers and council education staff can say they did their job properly last year?

I hope they all can, but, as football managers are fond of saying, the table never lies.

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