It is almost a year since Bradford's education chiefs and councillors were condemned by education watchdog Ofsted for the way they were handling education for the district's children.

A massive vote of no-confidence was given to the district's education authority for "miserably failing" youngsters in the classroom. Everyone agreed a radical overhaul of education was the only way forward.

It emerged that the Council was to take on a partner from the private sector to help in its running of education services.

Last month, a shortlist of four bidders was whittled down to just two - EduAction and Serco-QAA. In the next fortnight, the victor is expected to be announced.

Getting Bradford education services back on track will be a weighty job, but one of the two final bidders seems to have the right background, at least theoretically.

Among other projects, Serco-QAA's parent company is responsible for running the Docklands Light Railway and also the National Physical Laboratory (NPL).

The NPL is the UK's national standards laboratory, which is "working to satisfy the nation's current and future needs for physical measurement standards" - but the question people in Bradford are asking is whether it can satisfy the current and future education needs of the district's children.

The company's principal business is providing management services to government. In the UK alone Serco has transferred some 15,000 staff from the public arena and in to the private sector since 1993. It also employs 32,500 people in more than 35 countries so is used to dealing with large organisations - vital for the task in hand in Bradford, which will be the biggest education contract in Britain.

The background of Serco's staff is diverse; for example, it employs scientists, teachers, engineers, cleaning staff, systems designers, architects and electricians.

In 2000 the company acquired Quality Assurance Associates (QAA), a company at the forefront of the new education agenda; providing school inspection, training and consulting services across the UK to central and local government.

A Serco spokesman said: "The acquisition of QAA's specialist education expertise complements

Serco's experience in managing complex public sector services and enables Serco to contribute to the drive for improved education standards through the mix of public and private sector skills."

Serco's list of contracts and also unsuccessful bids shows that it is a jack of all trades prepared to turn its hand to a variety of projects in many different industries.

It has a wide range of contracts in defence, transport, local and state government, health, and justice, in particular HM Prison in Marchington, Staffordshire. But whether running a prison qualifies a company to run schools remains to be seen.

Serco recently made an unsuccessful bid for the National Air Traffic Control Public Private Partnership, but was awarded the £160m contract for the Highways Agency's national Traffic Control Centre.

Serco was formed when RCA (Radio Corporation of America) merged with General Electric in 1987. The company was renamed Serco in 1988 following a management buy-out.

The Government has put its faith in Serco in the education world when in February this year Serco became part of a £1.8million Government project calling on local authorities to develop innovative ways of working with the private sector and other partner organisations.

Education and Employment Secretary David Blunkett said the project would help develop new ways of working that could be adopted by town halls to improve education for pupils.

Tower Hamlets council will work with Serco to learn from its businesses and management structure.