IT was "education, education, education" which was immediately flagged up as Tony Blair's priority when he became Prime Minister.

And it is education, education, education which is threatening to blow up into a real problem for his Government as he switches focus back from the war against Iraq to pressing domestic issues.

The rumblings of discontent within classrooms are growing ever louder as schools struggle to balance their books and teachers make ominous threats about industrial action.

The biggest warning so far has been sounded at the National Union of Teachers conference, in Harrogate, with members pledging to boycott tests for seven, 11 and 14-year-olds, and to hold strike ballots if jobs are lost as a result of the school budgets crisis.

The Government will know just how serious the threat from teachers is next week when the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers debates calls for the abolition of the tests.

The last thing children need is industrial strife in the classrooms and the onus is on the Government to come up with a more manageable way of assessing pupils' progress in the formative years.

Parents share the concerns of teachers about examination overload and the obsession with league tables, but they still want standards to be raised.

That is the dilemma for the Government - how does it find the right balance between pressure and achievement.

Ministers have signalled that significant change is on the way but, with teachers clearly losing patience, the details of that review cannot come quickly enough.

IT cannot be very often that a North-East football team has been promoted on the back of a 4-0 thrashing and with fans chanting their discontent.

But Hartlepool United are on their way to Division Two and they deserve our congratulations for bringing an element of success to a football-mad region.

It means, of course, that next season will be bereft of any Darlington versus Hartlepool derbies.

We hope that will be put right as soon as possible - and we don't mean by Hartlepool coming straight back down.