Last updated 13:33, Friday, 29 February 2008

SCHOOLS Minister Andrew Adonis is “acutely concerned” about the high number of failing schools in Cumbria. It’s safe to say he’s not the only one.

In a stinging rebuke directed towards county council education chiefs, he insists the inadequacy of so much of the schooling offered to Cumbria’s children cannot be tolerated and demands to be told what plans are in place to raise standards.

To be fair to all concerned with this county’s beleaguered education system, there is little indication of anything sub-standard being tolerated.

Poor results, under-performing schools and the educational chances lost to so many children while Cumbria so consistently fails to achieve, are suffered with unhappiness, frustration and a determination to build a better future.

Had the minister chosen to study a little more carefully and closely all efforts being made by the education authority, private business, heads, teachers and parents to turn our shameful record on its head, he’d have been perhaps more fully aware that heavy investment of financial and human resources is already rooted in the future of Cumbria’s education.

It is supporting the drive that will bring improvement.

But juggernauts don’t turn on a sixpence. There’s no magic wand to make all the bad stuff go away overnight and educational excellence emerge in the morning.

Lord Adonis has asked for regular reports from the school improvement board and called on its members to meet him after Easter. He wants first hand reports on how educational provision in Cumbria is going to be transformed.

That’s as maybe – but existing plans need time for achievement and he won’t change that. His indictment of the county council is not so much direct intervention nor government storming in to control schools like cavalry rushing in for ultimate rescue. It is the familiar late arrival of a sabre rattler – taking spot-lit centre stage just before the fall of the final curtain.