The private company that provides services to Waltham Forest schools has set up an action plan to tackle the borough's bad educational reputation.

EduAction, which took over from the local education authority last year to provide external help to the ailing department, has so far seen slow results in its attempts to raise standards.

But the company's director of schools' support services, Graham Moss, said this week that schools should be performing in line with the national average by 2007.

He told the Guardian: "There are fewer schools in special measures now than there were last year. If you've got one of the worst LEAs in the country, which is what Waltham Forest is, you don't transform it miraculously overnight.

"Services generally had deteriorated since the last Ofsted inspection, and the reason for that was we had lost senior officers and outside consultants were coming in, so we didn't make progress.

"At present, there are a number of areas where we have made progress in the last year. Poor leadership and management and poor special educational needs provision were our worst areas.

"We have a new management team in place and a plan agreed with schools on how we are going to bring about raising attainment in schools.

"Kids in Waltham Forest have been performing below the national average and we've said that by 2007 we will expect them to be performing at the national average. Everything is geared to ensuring that happens. The main concern Ofsted had was that special educational needs were not being met. By next year we would expect the quality of service to have rapidly improved.

"The process of children being statemented still takes too long and the dialogue between schools and ourselves is still not good enough. That's the one area that has not made significant progress. By this time next year we would expect schools to be happy with the quality of that service.

"The quality of service the old LEA provided was worse than we were led to believe, and we've had to prioritise improving the worst areas first. It's about changing the culture of the organisation, valuing staff and giving them training."

He said the 300-plus staff who used to work for the LEA but now work for EduAction had never before had support from senior managers, which they did now.

EduAction's contract to provide educational services expires in five years, and then it may either be extended, put out to tender again, or transferred back to the council.

Mr Moss added: "The Ofsted inspection in September will show the extent to which we've made progress and that we've fulfilled the promises we made.

"If the inspectors believe differently they will tell us, but I'm expecting no surprises.

"What we've now got to do in Waltham Forest is highlight the fact that there are some very good schools here. Our job is to make some schools better and bring up standards of schools not performing well, and that's something Waltham Forest has not been doing very well in the past."