REDCAR and Cleveland education authority has made considerable progress in promoting improvements across its 67 schools, the Office for Standards in Education said this week.

Overall, the authority was effective, well-run and strongly committed to schools which, in turn, valued its support highly, Ofsted reported on Tuesday. But it cited a few areas of weakness.

The authority's overall planning of school places, use of computers for school managerial purposes and valuation of school provision by elected councillors was said to be weak.

Ofsted inspectors spent three weeks looking at the authority's work. They visited schools and met teachers, head teachers, governors and church representatives.

They also looked at documents, met council staff and representatives, and circulated a questionnaire to all the schools, which was met with an 88pc response rate.

They reported that its support services were generally well-managed and operated coherently, and that it had good information about individual schools and pupils.

They said the education authority carried out the large majority of its functions satisfactorily or better than average. Ofsted praised the following practices as particularly effective:

l support for the use of performance data;

l support for early years education;

l provision for pupils educated at home;

l child protection, welfare, health and safety;

l partnership with other council and government agencies.

Its weaknesses were said to be:

l corporate support for the management use of computers in schools;

l strategic planning of school places;

l evaluation of provision by elected members.

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