By anyone’s reckoning, education provision in the Bradford district has been through some turbulent times.

In 2001, the education service was taken out of the hands of Bradford Council when the Government ordered the local authority to sort out its schools provision under threat of control being taken away and handed to the DfE. The result was a public-private partnership in the shape of a ten-year contract with Serco.

Measured purely in league tables, the level of progress made in pulling Bradford up the list was disappointing. Yes, results improved – it was just that the rest of the country was improving as well so the district continued to languish near the bottom.

Two years ago that decade-long contract came to an end and Bradford Council once again regained control of providing education. Since then, it’s been something of a mixed bag.

Since the local authority took back full control, four out of five primary pupils are now attending schools rated good or better by Ofsted, while the number of children going to secondary schools rated good to better went from 27.8 per cent to 47.5 per cent, according to figures released earlier this year.

But despite improvements, Bradford’s primary schools this year recorded the third-worst key stage two SATs results in England, while GCSE and A-level results remain in the lowest 20 per cent nationally.

But, as we should all know by now, league tables, reports and ratings do not tell the full story.

Bradford Telegraph and Argus: new schools awards logos

As a newspaper, we have a duty to report them all, without fear or favour, but we always try to do so with careful explanation, balance and riders to present a fuller story.

Bradford has a unique set of circumstances which affect our education performance, not least the unique and constantly-changing nature of our community make-up. We face pressures and problems which no other community faces in exactly the same way and which are completely different to those in many of the towns and cities we are compared against.

What we do know and understand from the reporting the Telegraph & Argus does every day on our district’s schools is that there is a great deal of good news coming from grass-roots, front-line teaching.

We conceived the T&A Schools Awards as a way of drawing out and highlighting those amazing stories of hard work, innovation, creativity and success that are daily transforming the lives of our children in the face of many difficulties.

We are thrilled that Bradford Council and the University of Bradford have accepted our invitation to join us in our mission – and now we need YOU to play your part.

We know there is fantastic work being done at all levels in our schools. We know that there are many dedicated teachers who strive to encourage, innovate and inspire. We know that there are a wealth of support staff and volunteers who make our schools tick over and make a real difference.

And we know that across the district there are young people who are getting an excellent grounding in academic, social and fun education that is setting them up for their future.

So it’s time for us to formally honour those individuals, schools and groups of volunteers such as parents and governors, with the recognition that they truly deserve.

There are 12 categories in our Schools Awards and nominations are open today. Whether you’re a school that wants to blow its own trumpet, a headteacher who wants to single out an extra-special achievement or project, a parent who wants to nominate a particularly inspiring teacher, we hope you’ll all put someone forward from the school you work at, your child attends, or which is in your community, to be considered for these inaugural awards.

We’ve worked with groups of senior headteachers at both primary and secondary levels, along with Education Bradford, to create a series of awards and criteria that should ensure that there’s something here that any and every school should be able to enter with a project or individual which fits the bill.

We know about all the hard work that’s being done out there – help us to tell everyone else by nominating in the Telegraph & Argus Bradford and District Schools Awards today.

Perry Austin-Clarke, editor of the Telegraph & Argus