The reasons suggested for having a new sub-committee to discuss problem schools in private seem appealing from the point of view of the image of education in Bradford. There are risks attached to washing your dirty linen in public.

If the meetings are held openly, the names of the schools and the range of problems which afflict them are bound to make headlines, and in some cases national headlines. That might deter some schools from bringing their difficulties to the sub-committee set up by the Interim Education Policy Partnership, to be discussed fully and frankly.

However, such secrecy clearly conflicts with the parents' right to information about the state of schools in Bradford. It also raises concerns that the education system in the district following what has effectively been privatisation could be less open than it was previously.

Parents who have expressed their concerns to the T&A feel that the public should have the right to know which schools are having problems, what those problems are, and what is going to be done to tackle them. On balance, they are right.

Whether they are run by the LEA or a private company, schools use public money so there is no doubt that they should be fully accountable to the public - and particularly to those members of the public whose children are of school age.

School linen, dirty or clean, is regularly washed in public via Ofsted reports, which pull no punches when problems are found. There is surely no over-riding reason why these sub-committee sessions should not be treated with the same openness.