CHESHIRE has been rated among the top 20 local education authorities in England and Wales.

This is the welcome outcome of an exhaustive examination of the LEA's performance by Ofsted and the Audit Commission.

Over nine months, inspectors scrutinised every aspect of Cheshire County Council's operations designed to support improvement in the standards, quality and management of schools.

And on publication of their report revealed Cheshire's rating as 'good'...one of just 19 out of 100 authorities to be judged that highly.

'The LEA has many strengths,' says the report. 'Its weaknesses are few in number and it has a good capacity to address the recommendations in this report.'

Inspectors noted that education was a high priority for the county council, which had spent £21m in 2001-2 to top up one of the country's lowest government per-pupil grant allocations.

Education chairman David Rowlands (Con) attributed Cheshire's success to the 'consistent hard work, dedication and shared commitment of some of the best staff in the country'.

And he stressed that education's high priority in Cheshire despite low central grant allocation was in fact the result of many years of shared determination by councillors 'regardless of political differences'.

Cllr Peter Nurse (Lab), education chairman before the June elections, added:

'The people of Cheshire get tremendous value for the money invested in education and we must always strive to maintain that position.

'This is a wonderful result which owes everything to teamwork from our administrative and school staff to parents and the pupils themselves.'

Inspectors found educational attainment high with pupils performing consistently above national averages and often above averages in similar authorities.

Cheshire schools are well managed with the LEA appropriately committed to promoting self-management and teaching is of a generally high quality.

Professional management in Cheshire's education service was deemed to be a particular strength with a director well-respected for his 'integrity, frankness and willingness to listen'.

The inspection team found relationships between schools and the LEA were very good with the former trusting officers and committed to working with them.

The LEA was commended on the preparation of its Education Development Plan; its approach to Best Value reviews and the monitoring, challenge, intervention and support provided to schools.

Strategic planning of services to help school improvement; support to schools causing concern; measures to raise standards of literacy and numeracy and to improve attendance, have all been singled out for praise.

And inspectors felt management of critical incidents in schools was handled well. The protection of children's health, safety and general welfare was also commended.

Areas of weakness already identified by the authority were: ICT support for schools; the strategy for special educational needs; the question of surplus places and the level of teaching for excluded pupils.