Oxfordshire County Council has acted with commendable speed in tackling the problem of our under-performing schools.

It is setting aside more than £1m to bring in a team of so-called super heads in an attempt to turn them round.

The seconded experts are expected to move from school to school, acting as senior advisers to secondary school headteachers.

The county council clearly means business - and not before time.

The move comes less than a month after the Audit Commission delivered a withering verdict on our education performance.

Poor school exam results offset many improvements in the council's general performance, and meant that the authority lost one of its precious stars - it now has three instead of four and has lost its 'excellent' status.

New education director Jane Tomlinson has said that some heads are in denial about consistently disappointing GCSE results, and that some children have a better chance of achieving good GCSE results in a town like Slough than in Oxfordshire.

According to latest figures, only 57 per cent of our pupils gained five GCSEs at grade C or better, compared with 69.2 in Buckinghamshire and 64 per cent in Gloucestershire.

This is simply not good enough - schools in an affluent county like ours should be doing much better.

The introduction of super heads will hopefully identify what is wrong, then action can be taken quickly to put things right.

However, an interesting comment has come from Jill Judson, the well-respected head at The Cherwell School in Oxford.

She suggests that all is not well in the schools' improvement service at County Hall.

Perhaps some of the problems in our schools being highlighted by county councillors are closer to home.