LEIGH EAZ project director Alan Dutton is justly proud of the role the Zone has played in the rapid escalation of computer technology.

Through the five-year lifespan of the Education Action Zone, a major core target has been the raising of attainment in ICT.

"It has been a staggering success story," said a delighted Mr Dutton.

All 26 schools within Leigh EAZ are now fully equipped with high-tech equipment and accompanying software --backed by long-term training.

But now Leigh EAZ is preparing to take ICT training one giant leap into a high-tech future.

Leading Teachers for ICT have been identified and grouped into two clusters -- their brief, to take EAZ schools beyond the Internet horizons to new levels of computer know-how and the sharing of that knowledge.

The first group - The Bedford Cluster - consists of Paul Berrisford, Carol Higham and Paul Macaffery at Bedford High; they have linked up with Leigh CE (both junior and infant departments) and St John's Infants, providing ICT inset and demonstrations to suit the schools' needs.

The second cluster -- Debra Haworth (Green Hall), Lesley Jackson (Westleigh High) and Karen Morris (Westleigh Meths) plus St Thomas's CE trio Christine Stacey, Alison Davies and Anne Packwood -- will offer ICT demonstration lessons each term to the remaining Zone schools.

Lesley Fitzsimmons, the EAZ's ICT advisory teacher, said: "It was crucial that all children be given the chance to take up the computer challenge, to be comfortable at the keyboard, to learn how to apply computer knowledge to everyday situations.

"The expertise of many youngsters in our High Schools is now quite staggering; but, perhaps even more astounding, is the ease in which infants in our primary schools slip into computer programs."

All of which leads Alan Dutton to recall the dawn of the computer age at St Thomas CE School nearly 20 years ago.

As the Journal of 1984 highlighted he was then newly entrenched as headmaster at the ground-breaking Bedford school an establishment which enjoyed international recognition for innovative thinking.

St Thomas's was chosen by Wigan Education Authority as its computer flagship during a visit by experts from Italy and West Germany.

The visit was reported in the Journal under the headline 'Mama-mia! Computer wizards amaze Luigi' -- and Alan this week proudly produced the cutting (dated around 1984).

Our story revealed how . . . "Italian educational specialist Luigi Stasi (a Technical Institute director from Benevento) and Joachim Otto (the director of an Institute of Teacher Training and Educational Research in Munich) were amazed to find Leigh junior and infant children as young as four-year-old using high technology computers in school."

Theme of the week-long visit was "The New Information Technologies in the Education System" and the Journal reported that Mr Stasi said: "The use of computers in schools is much more advanced over here. Children in England start to use them at such an early age.

"I see that youngsters over here use them from the age of four in some cases, whereas in Italy we only begin to use them in middle school from the age of 11."

The two European visitors were shown around both the infant and junior departments of the school by Dr Jim Dewey (Deputy Director of Education), Eric Woods (Wigan's Teacher Advisor for Computers), Alan Dutton, and the Vicar of St Thomas, Father Roger Alderson.

Dr Dewey said: "From St Thomas' point of view we chose it as an ideal primary school for the visit as it was a prime mover when computers came into primaries in Wigan and took part in the original pilot study for computers in infant and junior schools back in September 1983."