COUNTY education chiefs have fallen short in their efforts to cut the number of schools in Kent judged by Ofsted to be failing or to have serious weaknesses.

Kent County Council had aimed to reduce by a quarter the number of schools failed by Ofsted in 2002-2003 and to reduce by a third those with serious weaknesses.

However, a report detailing how the education authority has done reveals that in both categories, the number has risen and both targets have been missed.

KCC had planned to cut the number of officially failing schools from 12 to eight. In fact, the number rose to 13 at the end of April and has since increased to 17.

KCC also missed its target of cutting the number of schools with serious weaknesses from 18 to 12. The number rose to 19 last year.

The authority has also made no progress in cutting the number of schools identified as facing “challenging circumstances” – a third target. There, the number of schools stayed at 28 against a target of 15.

However, KCC has managed to make better progress in increasing the number of its primary and secondary schools judged by Ofsted to be “good” or “very good.”

The percentage of primaries has risen from 66.8 per cent to 69.7 per cent while the number of secondary schools has risen from 63 per cent to 65.4 per cent – although in both cases, the figures are below the national average.

Cllr Paul Carter, KCC's cabinet member for education, said he was disappointed at the figures for failing schools.

However, he said a new county council strategy of creating clusters of schools with a shared responsibility for lifting standards would help.

“I believe that clusters will empower schools significantly and enable them to work together in a way which allows them to deploy staff against their own priorities rather than those determined by the LEA,” he said.

Graham Badman, KCC's education director, insisted the figures represented only part of a wider picture and that Kent had a good track record in helping schools out of special measures.

“Under our new regime we will be harnessing the strengths of other schools to help out and putting multi-disciplinary teams [into failing schools.] We do not believe these figures represent a trend and expect there to be a reducing number.”

Although KCC would not shirk from closing failing schools if that was appropriate, it would also look at other, more radical options, such as linking schools to form federations and widening the number of specialist academies, he added.

The targets are among more than 80 which were set by County Hall’s ruling Conservative administration in 2002 as part of a four-year strategy.

In most cases, the county council says most are on target but concedes “considerable progress” needs to be made in others.