We hear that this year’s primary school results show a marked upward turn, with county averages edging ahead of the national figures. Detailed analysis will follow and our focus must remain especially tight in the city.

But the schools and the local authority have delivered a turnaround that, if sustained, augurs well for the young people starting their learning career in our schools.

How sad, then, to have so many of our primaries being driven from the door of a retreating local authority, seduced by the Government’s determination to establish academies throughout the country. We have just demonstrated that local authority schools can improve: the Government chants a mantra that improvement is causally linked to academy status.

There was nothing in the Coalition agreement of 2010 about driving schools out of their local authority to become academies. Neither was any ‘get out of jail’ card issued to LAs that fail their young people.

Local politicians should be held to account for the school system they supervise: national politicians should recall the mandate upon which they were elected (or through which they negotiated power).

So, celebrating the improvement of our primary school results, we should encourage our local school and political leaders to take pride in the work they have delivered and urge more of the same.

Now is not the time to dismantle a system that, albeit belatedly, has shown the results of a determination to improve.

If we find ourselves able to secure school improvement even in straitened times, then might not our local leaders explore options for sustaining the work they carry forward in the name of our young people.

School governors have a choice; and we might encourage them to continue sharing their responsibility with a revitalised local authority, answerable to us.

Peter Martin Bampton