BRADFORD desperately needs a course of action to pull its education performance out of the doldrums – the district is consistently below the national average in league tables.

So it is good to see Bradford Council setting itself the ambitious target of ensuring that every single school in the district achieves either the “good” or “outstanding” level - as set out by the education watchdog Ofsted - by the year 2017.

This sort of concrete target to aim for is something that has been severely lacking in Bradford for many years, both in the years when education was run by Serco and when it was previously in local authority control.

There must, of course, be a note of caution – merely dragging up standards to the levels expected by Ofsted isn’t necessarily the be-all and end-all; educational achievement and attainment might not be raised by simply having all the right boxes ticked.

But it is certainly an admirable decision for Bradford Council to take and it is to be hoped that there is a sound and workable plan in place to help them achieve this worthy goal.

If all schools are as good as they possibly can be it might well have a knock-on effect with regards to the parental choice which sees “better” schools over-subscribed and less popular schools struggling.

With all schools working at their capacity there might be a welcome return to parents sending their children to the closest school to their home, reducing the need for children to travel across the district. This is a tough task for the Council. But if they can pull it off, it will certainly help to set the foundations for higher marks in the future - literally.