More than thirty local education authorities have turned to City of York Council for advice after its Beacon Status award in February.

Staff from City of York Council's educational services team have been taking stock after a breathless six months of Beacon Status activities to spread their success story across the nation.

And among one of the main features of their activities over the last nine months has been the queue of councils turning to York's educational services team for help and advice.

Murray Rose, the council's acting assistant director of education, said, "Thanks to our Beacon Status success and last year's excellent OFSTED inspection report, a number of local authorities, from all parts of the country, have come to us for advice which we have been able to offer on a consultancy basis.

"A key responsibility of any Beacon Status council is to share its success with other service providers. Our success in encouraging inclusion and tackling underachievement among traditionally disadvantaged groups has led to other schools providers wanting to find out how we do it."

The council's success in tackling underachievement has included securing training, employment or ongoing education for school leavers in pupil referral units and working with traveller children.

Mr Rose, responsible for preparing and presenting the original bid, has been leading the year-long programme which ends next March and activities so far have included: hosting a Beacon conference in York - the best attended Beacon event of the year nationally. The event showcased the council's best activities from the Pupil Referral Units, Work Related Learning, Re-integration and work with Travellers in schools production of a Beacon pack of core best practice guidance, to use in consultancy work with other authorities launch of a Beacon website, which is regularly updated. acting as advisers to the Department for Education and Skills on setting up a national network of pupil referral units hosting a regional conference of Traveller Education Services presenting the York story to the Local Government Association's annual conference The council is also pleased that last summer more children than ever before gained awards for their vocational training programmes. The scheme was extended to offer opportunities to children in special schools last year and they benefited from it significantly. Councillor Janet Looker, the council's executive member for education, said, "Our schools are making themselves into places where more young people can be successful. Through target setting and through dedicated support by school staff more children are achieving higher grades in all levels of public examination. "When we can see that traditionally disadvantaged groups are doing better than ever before we also know that everyone in the school is benefiting from the supportive climate that has been created." END

Notes for Editors Among the features in York's success in raising attainment in schools are: o 100 percent of year 11 leavers from the Pupil Referral Unit moving into education, jobs or training o Providing full time education for excluded pupils two years ahead of the Government's timetable o Bringing exclusions down rapidly already to a level well below the Government's year 2002 target figure o 67% cut in city centre crime committed by young people as a result of the success of the Truancy Watch scheme o Maintaining a high and improving level of attendance by Traveller children o Bringing an unprecedented number and range of partners together to develop a nationally applicable work related learning programme The Beacon Council scheme was established in 1999 by the Government to select a number of councils to act as pace setters and centres of excellence. Last year 33 beacon awards were given to 42 councils. This year 43 beacon awards have been given to 39 councils, from an original pool of 173 applications. The Government appointed an independent Advisory Panel to recommend the selection of beacon councils each year.