A Bradford head teacher was speaking on German radio today about raising standards in education.

But Tony Thorne, from Hanson School, was not wringing his hands about failure in the district during the Question Time-style debate.

He had a positive message, not just about his own school, but about education across Bradford and England. And he expected the Germans to be hanging onto his every word.

"In most cases what is going on in most schools in England is ahead of what is happening in Germany,'' he said.

"The rest of the world is looking to us in education because we are actually experts in raising standards. Some of the things we are getting used to, like performance-related pay, are very radical and the Germans are looking to follow our lead."

Mr Thorne, a linguist, is the only delegate from an English-speaking country at the international education conference at Speyer, near Frankfurt.

Other delegates are from Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

Hanson School has managed to raise the proportion of pupils getting five good GCSEs from 37 to 47 per cent. Mr Thorne says this has been achieved with an innovative "value added" approach of setting individual achievement targets for every pupil.