AN education 'czar' is to be appointed to drive up flagging standards in Darlington schools.

The proposal would see a super-head working with headteachers of the town's secondary schools in the first experiment of its kind.

The plan is to place top-performing Hurworth School at the centre of the partnership.

Eamonn Farrar, who as headteacher of Hurworth School transformed it into one of the top 40 schools in the country, is earmarked for the job, to start in September.

The plans were put to Darlington headteachers on Friday. The local authority is now seeking approval from Hurworth School governors and Darlington headteachers.

The news comes after plans were revealed to merge Hurworth School and Eastbourne Comprehensive in a new £20m school on the edge of town.

The poor performance of schools in Darlington was underlined yesterday at Darlington Borough Council's Lifelong Learning Scrutiny Committee meeting.

The national minimum is 38 per cent of pupils achieving the five A*to C grades at GCSE. In Darlington, it was 37 per cent. Girls also outperform boys at every stage.

Yesterday, Mr Farrar, acting headteacher of Eastbourne Comprehensive following the suspension of headteacher Karen Pemberton, said the new role as director of the Darlington Education Improvement Partnership required a good relationship with headteachers.

He said: "There are excellent headteachers in Darlington, who have inherited huge and deep-rooted problems."

Middleton St George councillors will tonight attend a meeting of Hurworth Parish Council to set up a pressure group to save Hurworth.

Councillor Clive Bullock, a former governor of Hurworth Primary School, said: "It's unbelievable that Darlington's schools are in a mess and they want to drag Hurworth into that mess."