AN immediate reply has been sent by Borough of Poole in response to Ofsted's highly critical letter with the authority underlining its commitment to improving the town's schools.

Bradley Simmons, Ofsted regional director for the south west, called for council leader Cllr Janet Walton to write to him stating how she intended to hold officers and schools to account for making a rapid improvement and she replied within 24 hours.

"The education standards and life chances of our children and young people are an absolute priority for the council," said Cllr Walton in her letter.

She accepted that the authority and the schools had much more work to do to improve outcomes for pupils at Key Stages 2 and 4 and for disadvantaged children.

She said the council would "robustly implement" the recommendations of the Ofsted report and listed actions already taken including allocating £140,000 additional funding for school improvement, working with head teachers to develop a new education strategy and setting up a cross-party working party to monitor progress.

The council had taken a proactive approach to tackling poor leadership in schools, had raised concerns about academies and agreed improvement plans with schools where 2015 results at KS2 were not acceptable.

She pledged to "consistently monitor" implementation of the strategy and action plan and said she and the council were fully committed to achieving rapid improvement and would be "tireless" in pursuit of their aims.

However the leader of Poole People, Cllr Mark Howell, is calling for a special task force to be created to deal with the poor performance of the town's schools.

"We believe that the council should treat this as a crisis situation and create a special task force to work with schools, parents and children to urgently identify the root causes of under-achievement and develop a strategy to overcome them," he said.

Cllr Mike White, cabinet portfolio holder for children and young people, said: “The council is fully committed to implementing the recommendations of Ofsted’s inspection report and is determined to work together with our schools to achieve rapid and sustained improvements in education standards."