A WORKING party of councillors is to be set up in Poole with the aim of raising educational standards.

This is an immediate response to the independent ISOS report which slammed the borough's "extremely low" performing schools and demanded the council take "determined action" to improve.

Cllr Mike White, Borough of Poole cabinet portfolio holder for children and young people disputed that it was a "damning report".

"There are some very positive comments. While there are some areas for improvement I wouldn't overall say the report was damning," he said.

However Tuesday night's children and young people’s overview and scrutiny committee unanimously approved that a new working party of members be set up to raise educational standards.

"A major remit of that raising educational standards working party will be to review and develop the action plan following the ISOS report," said Cllr White.

Officers are currently drawing up an action plan on which progress will be monitored by the working party and three monthly reports will go to the whole committee.

Top of the five priorities to focus on during the next six months was to make further improvements in attainment and progress at Key Stage 2, says the report, with the most important being to accelerate the development of school-to-school support.

Cllr Mike Brooke, leader of the Liberal Democrats, said in 2013 his standards in schools working party came up with with similar recommendations, pointing out they needed to share good practice, involve governors and train them properly.

"Certainly most of the recommendations were fairly obvious to anyone who knew anything about education," said the former teacher.

Cllr Sandra Moore, who was a member of the previous working party, said: "One of the recommendations I was very anxious to see, and they are taking up, is that extra additional resources are going into working to improve Key Stage 2."

She added: "In the past there used to be a whole unit for school improvements. The government changed that and and made the schools responsible for their own school improvement plan."

She said she was pleased that more resources were to be put into the "small but good" team.