FENLAND: A year of considerable achievement for our schools

AS Fenland schools prepare to break for the summer, it's an opportune moment to reflect on the massive transformation of achievement that points to an altogether better tomorrow.

You need only to look through recent editions of this paper to note, with what we hope has been satisfaction, the tremendous energy and enterprise that is alive and well in our secondary schools.

We are loathe to single out any particular school for recognising improvement since schools in Chatteris, Whittlesey and March have been exemplary in their aspirations and remain excited and upbeat about future investment under the Building Schools for the Future initiative.

However we cannot allow the end of term to slip by without placing on record the commendable turn around in spirit and strength at the Thomas Clarkson Community College, Wisbech.

This is a school with a wide catchment area, and is integral to the success, or failure, of education in Fenland as a whole. .

Maureen Strudwick may have done her bit as head to effect an impressive sea change in both attitude and accomplishment but it is her staff that is entitled to reflect in some of the measurable improvements to date.

But we have also heard much, of late, from the Clarkson students and they, too, have begun to speak with pride and passion about the school's willingness to progress.

The debacle over the Learning and Skills Council bid for a new campus in March ( and the expectation, so we hear, of a bill for up to � 12 million for the aborted work done to date) remains a distressing obstacle to advancement.

But that battle is for another day and should not debar in any way shape or form our recognition of an academic year that ends with considerably more optimism than it began.