We are standing out here in Cornwall because we believe that what is being imposed is unreasonable

Director of education

The two sides have failed to agree on what the county's new targets for English and maths results should be.

The local education authority says the children are being asked to reach "unrealistic" levels of attainment.

Officially, negotiations are still going on - but in practice nothing has happened for weeks.

The Department for Education in London is suggesting it might not approve the county's education development plan, due to be agreed by the end of this month.

Making a stand

The county's director of education, Jonathan Harris, said: "We are standing out here in Cornwall because we believe that what is being imposed is unreasonable and is not going to help our schools and is not going to improve the system."

He wanted to look at the progress that was being made, project that forward and set schools challenging targets.

"But let's base that on reality so that heads and staff can say, 'yes, we can achieve this', rather than set something that is not achievable.

"I hope that we can come to some reasonable compromise with officials and indeed ministers, which sets us targets which we can ahieve, but I don't really know what will happen".

New targets

By law, all education authorities have to have a three-year plan - approved by the education secretary - which lists the targets they have set for school improvement, as their contributions to reaching the national targets set by ministers.

When the first set of plans were published, in 1998, the then education secretary, David Blunkett, ordered six authorities to do them again - Liverpool, Rotherham, Halton and the London Boroughs of Hackney, Southwark and Islington.

The second set of plans is now due and new national targets for England were announced last week by the current education secretary, Estelle Morris.

They are that, by 2004, 85% of 11 year olds will have reached the level of attainment expected for their age in English and in maths.

When the list of targets for each education authority was published, a number had asterisks alongside the figures they had been set, signifying that negotiations were still going on.

In trouble

Cornwall, however, had only an asterisk - there was not even a tentative figure.

Five other councils had figures with asterisks against them for the maths target or for both maths and English: Ealing, Harrow, Havering, Southend and Wandsworth.

 Click here for the list

Ultimately schools set their own targets - an authority cannot dictate them.

The only sanction might be that Ofsted inspectors would criticise a school for not having set targets which were sufficiently challenging.

Stand-off

But a school might find itself in practical difficulties if it lost the goodwill of its local education authority.

Likewise an authority would not want to fall foul of the department nationally, to which it often has to bid for funding.

But Cornwall says it does not see the point of agreeing to targets it does not think its schools can meet.

A spokesperson for the Department for Education said: "We shall be considering their targets when we reach a decision about approving their education development plan at the end of this month."

Opposition

A Cornwall-based literacy specialist, Sue Palmer, is running a campaign against the targets.

Her internet-based petition, Time to Teach, has gathered more than 1,000 signatures of support.

She says "target mania" is stifling teaching.

"The government has already produced complete lesson plans and materials, including a 'teaching script', for some Year 6 lessons," she says.

"Many teachers feel obliged to use these materials - 'If I follow their lessons to the letter, no one can blame me if my children don't get their Level 4' - even though they know that 'teaching by numbers' is boring and usually ineffective."