THE BILL for the legacy of failing schools that the new Blackburn with Darwen education authority inherits is put today at £13million.

And though council tax payers may escape much of the sting for the rescue plan - as the Council looks to Europe and the private sector for fifty-fifty financing - this will be money well spent if a turnaround is achieved.

For as well as having seven schools labelled as failing by the education standards watchdog, Ofsted, the level of schooling generally is so low that the education authority is expected to be among the bottom five authorities in the country when the council wins unitary status. Not only does this mean that hundreds of children are risk being denied opportunity in life, it bodes ill for the vigour of the local economy and its future if the talents of the upcoming generation of workers have been suppressed by sub-standard schooling.

For that reason alone, the private sector has a strong incentive to back the recovery package that has been drafted.

And further help may be available to improve facilities in the form of the £83 million schools repair programme that the government is set to launch tomorrow.

What, however, is vital about the rescue programme is the need for urgent implementation of the action plan that has been drawn up and for improved results to become swiftly visible - and for the drive to be accompanied wherever necessary by the ruthless rooting out of bad teaching and bad teachers.

That is because each school day that passes with poor standards in place is one that adds to the sentences of children who become condemned to second-class citizenship as adults.

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