Schools: 'We'll plan for future of the city'

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Council leader Margaret Eaton said there had been ten years of "meddle and muddle" over education in the district.

She said: "I think parents will feel desperately let down. Teachers have done a good job but they have failed to get the support. Bureaucracy has been allowed to rule the blackboard."

She added that the three-tier system and Bradford's special problems had been consistently blamed for its bad position in the league tables.

"Now you can drive a cart and horse through that excuse," she said.

She said there had been serious underfunding and education had come about seventh down the list of priorities. "Targets were set even lower than the Government's so they looked better than they were. But depravation should drive you to do more and not less," she said. "Financial information which came to the education was like plaiting fog. The real situation was always hidden. A generation of children have been failed." She said they must now have a consultants report as a matter of urgency and find the right way forward. But she said the new Council leadership had already taken action through a separate education scrutiny committee which would also include faith groups and teachers.

"We now need to draw a line under this and look clearly at plans for the future. It is clear from the Ofsted that the LEA is incapable of making its own resolution. I believe this is the worst Ofsted ever received by an authority.

Labour group leader Ian Greenwood, who was Council leader before the elections, said: "No one in Bradford over the last 25 years has really bottomed the issue of the LEA."

He said it had become clear before he took over as leader two years ago that action had to be taken in driving standards up.

Councillor Greenwood said in the first year of his leadership he had put an extra £3 million, and more had followed, including £11 million over the next three years.

"The current schools reorganisation was a massive commitment and not an easy one. It became increasingly obvious that only radical change would alter the LEA."

He said it had become clear sometime ago – and before the Ofsted report – that radical changes were necessary to improve education services.

"There is no doubt many of the criticisms in the report are valid. We recognise there has been failure over the years and we have to look to the future."

He believed the model he had announced with Chief Executive Ian Stewart before the elections was the best for Bradford because it included an education board with representatives including headteachers and chaired by education experts.

"I was being told by people until very recently that we would pass the Ofsted. It was said that it was not as bad as some of the others. People didn't have a clear grasp of the situation."

Ian Stewart, Chief Executive of Bradford Metropolitan District Council, said: "The report makes it quite plain that there are serious weaknesses in many of the services provided by the Education Directorate.

But it also acknowledges the efforts Bradford has been making in the recent past to change this.

We do some things well but there are a lot of areas where we need to improve if we are to provide the first-class education system which the parents and children of Bradford deserve.

Our young people are the key to this district's future.

"We must make sure our education services and the support they offer are the best possible.

"Education and its funding is at the top of our agenda.

Earlier this year the Council agreed a new financial strategy that will see an extra £11 million directed into school budgets over the next three years. The determination to change is there.

"But we now need to look at the best way of delivering that change successfully."

Leader of the Liberal Democrat Group Councillor Jeanette Sunderland: "The report was not a shock, but the level of performance was a shock."

She said the Council had put an educational development plan together but had not been capable of delivering it.

"It was just a large laborious document. They managed to collect the data but did not manage to interpret it."

She said councillors who had pointed out that there were serious problems and given details which were ignored had been "totally vindicated".

Coun Sunderland said: "Parents are going to feel very shocked about this report and the range and depth of problems. We have to make huge strides forward now to recover lost ground." She pointed out that for the first time commitment to education funding was in standing orders. "There has never been effective scrutiny of education and information coming through the education committee to councillors was so bad that we never even got a report on failures in the league tables. We want staff pulling together now there is a new agenda and changes.

"The Government has made it very clear we have to explore a private sector arrangement. We have to take things forward. As a parent I know we have had to raise money ourselves to put into schools. It is clear they have been consistently under-funded over the years. there is nobody to blame for this other than the Labour Group."