Norfolk's first regional schools commissioner for the east was welcomed by a handful of the county's academies during a visit to the area as part of his latest plans to put Norfolk back on the map for education.

Tim Coulson spent today visiting Ormiston Venture Academy and Ormiston Herman Academy in Gorleston before travelling to the city to Ormiston Victory Academy and the City of Norwich School (CNS) - an Ormiston Academy.

Dr Coulson toured each school, meeting pupils and staff and said he hoped the visit would allow him to find out more about how he can improve academies in Norfolk.

'I want to work with anyone and everyone to say how can we make this the best region for education?' he said. 'There's been alot of critiscim for education in this region but we want people to look in on the region as a place to really envy education.

'Rather than saying an acedemy is the prefered option for every school it has to be the right choice. We want every child in this region to go to a really, really good school.

'There is no magic but what will make you a good school is if the school knows why it wants to change to an academy.'

He added that he 'was close' to finishing appointing the people from Norfolk or Suffolk to sit on his head teachers board.

Dr Coulson is the previous headteacher of William Tyndale School in Islington and was named the first regional schools commissioner for the North-East London and East region after a new position was created to monitor the performance of academies.

His role primarily involves overseeing academies and free schools and challenge those that are failing. He will work with new national schools commissioner, Frank Green, and education secretary Nicky Morgan.

He will also help make decisions about the opening of new academies and follow-up concerns about the capacity of the Department for Education to deal with the nearly 5,000 academies across England directly accountable to it.

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