AFTER three decades of being a councillor, it never ceases to amaze me that almost everyday brings a new challenge or experience.

A good example of this was my first official engagement as the county’s Executive Member for Education at the end of May. It saw me raised high in a cherry picker with the Suffragan Bishop of Basingstoke for the unveiling and blessing of a symbolic, gold cross at Hampshire’s newest primary school.

Local communities have worked with their local diocese to deliver quality education for our young people for more than 300 years but never before has that partnership been so important.

The new £5.6million Pilgrims Cross C of E voluntary aided school is being built to serve the rapidly growing local community at Picket Twenty, just outside Andover.

It is testament to how Hampshire County Council is growing its services to schools, working with exceptional architects to deliver another first class building.

The days when Hampshire County Council managed all state schools and controlled what they did are long gone.

Our role is changing and in a landscape where academies and free schools are being encouraged, it is necessary that we adapt and improve our many other services to schools that help children and young people achieve.

Top of my responsibilities are support, challenge and intervention to ensure the best educational experience for every child with the aim of working towards providing all of them with access to a good or outstanding local school.

The school system in Hampshire serves the population well with 75 per cent of primary schoolchildren and 77 per cent of secondary schoolchildren attending a good or outstanding school, placing Hampshire among the highest performing in England.

Generally Hampshire children attain high education standards when compared with standards nationally. I will be championing the challenge and support that brings schools together to share outstanding practice.

We’re investing £165m creating around 8,000 new, high quality school places over the next three years in one of our biggest ever capital programmes to ensure the best learning facilities and our Children’s Services have been judged as ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted based on ‘an unrelenting focus on improving outcomes for young people and the quality of services we provide for them’.

Partnership working is the future and I’m making it my job to sustain and improve those partnerships and grow our services to schools more than ever before.

Cllr Peter Edgar, Executive Member for Education Hampshire County Council