GOVERNMENT officials have been to Blackburn to check out the council's ambitious plans to form an education action zone.

Assessors from the Department for Education and Employment visited Queen's Park High where they were given a presentation.

The council is bidding to set up a new zone to raise achievement in target schools which include three secondary, one special and 15 primary schools.

If successful an extra £1 million a year funding would be brought into the zone.

The council has established a multi-agency partnership forum to manage the zone with private sector support from the Blackburn Partnership.

One of the key targets of the bid is to increase the percentage of youngsters gaining five GCSEs at grade C or above from 28 per cent to 40 per cent by the year 2000.

If the bid is successful the extra cash will help fund three new state-of-the-art interactive boards for each of the schools. Councillor Bill Taylor, chairman of education and training for the council, said: "The assessors' visit went extremely well. The general commitment by all our partners to raising standards in schools was evident and I would like to thank everyone who joined the council.

"We are committed to raising standards in all our schools. If the bid is successful it will help us take a giant step forward towards achieving our objectives."

The council has been included in a short-list of 47 local education authorities hoping to establish an action zone.

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