"About time too!" will be the cry across the district at the revelation today that Bradford Council has produced a far-reaching blueprint for improving levels of performance in the city's schools. Bradford has been showing up very badly in the national schools league table and has one of the worst truancy records in the country.

Business leaders in particular have called for a long time for stringent action to be taken to improve the quality of learning achieved by people leaving the district's schools, to help to create a more capable and highly-skilled workforce for the city and its future needs.

The blueprint rightly highlights key problems which need to be tackled as a priority, particularly the special difficulties which arise because of the district's cultural make-up and the extra encouragement which needs to be given to boy pupils, who seem to be trailing behind the girls in their enthusiasm for education. The ambitious targets for improvements in literacy, numeracy and information technology are to be applauded.

However, there are bound to be wry smiles on many faces at the thought that it has taken a central government initiative to focus official minds on the production of this blueprint. Education authorities are being forced to prepare mandatory development plans if they want to guarantee future funding.

It should have happened long ago, without any Whitehall arm-twisting. Now we have it at last, it is vital that parents, teachers and the Council get together behind it and make it happen.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.