The home page of “London Challenge”, the Government’s campaign to improve secondary education in the capital on the DfES site, boasts of “a plethora of energy existing in the education system in London...“Being a column of little brain, the Diary looked up “plethora” in a dictionary: “Morbid condition marked by excess of red corpuscles in the blood; (fig) unhealthy repletion.” Cynics may feel this is an accurate metaphor for the outcome of successive and excessive DfES initiatives. But did they really mean to say that?