School inspectors have a duty to “shine the spotlight” on areas where children are not receiving a good or better education, an Ofsted director said last night.

Mike Cladingbowl (pictured right), the northern regional director of Ofsted, told the Telegraph & Argus that yesterday’s annual report highlighted how while schools in England were getting better overall, there were areas where education was not “good enough”.

The national report revealed nearly 2.3 million children across the country were at schools which were not good or outstanding.

Mr Cladingbowl said it was right for Ofsted to reveal where students were not attending good schools.

He said: “That’s our job, that’s what we have to do and it’s right that where there are parts of the country where children are not receiving a good or better education, which is the education they should receive, it’s right that we should shine the spotlight on them.”

Mr Cladingbowl said the report showed progress in schools across the country was not good enough.

He said: “We have published this information so that local people, parents, schools, councillors and local authorities can see that there’s too much variation and there are some parts of the country struggling and from the figures Bradford is one of them where children are not getting the good education that they deserve in secondary schools.

“In primary schools it’s different.”

Mr Cladingbowl said the children’s backgrounds and the areas they live in were not the main factor for deciding on whether a school was good or not.

He said: “All of our evidence is that it is the leadership of the school, the headteacher and the governors in the school set high standards, high expectations and how well they work with the children to make sure the children are at good lessons day-in day-out.

“It can be done and there are plenty of schools in Bradford where they have turned things around.

“However, there are too many of the children who go to secondary schools in Bradford who are not going to a good school and we need to do something about it.”