A BOSS at one of Bradford’s top companies says more needs to be done to convince businesses to play their role in improving the district’s schools.

Frank Clayton, head of group learning and development at NG Bailey, was speaking at a public forum for education this evening. During his talk he pointed out that just two of the 100 people in attendance at the important meeting were from the business sector.

The open forum, held at Margaret McMillan tower, was discussing the Bradford Education Covenant, drawn up last year as a way of highlighting what needed to be done to improve the district’s struggling education system.

As well as detailing what Bradford Council and schools have to do, the covenant also calls for charities, parents, and the local community to have a much bigger role in improving results.

And businesses are asked to play their part by providing more apprenticeships, allowing employees time to volunteer in schools, and offering more work experience.

Mr Clayton, also chairman of Bradford’s Centre of Excellence for Environmental Technologies, said: “Businesses need to do more to help fix the skills shortage. With the recent EU vote, the pool of talented labour just got smaller for a lot of businesses.

“There are just two business representatives in this room, so we need to ask how we can get more interested in improving education. It seems like education isn’t an important enough issue for businesses, and it should be. We need to give them a more compelling commercial reason to get involved in improving the district’s education.”

Some of the suggestions raised in the forum looked at ways to get parents more involved in their children’s education - one was that charities and community groups use school buildings more, getting families used to the idea of getting involved with what goes on in their children’s schools.

The forum was told it was particularly important that parents became more engaged with their children’s’ learning at home, which would lead to improved performance in school.

Adrian Kneeshaw, head of Carlton Bolling College, was among those attending the forum. He said Bradford’s education system had to re-build its reputation to attract more top teachers, adding: “Bradford is a bit like a school in special measures. We have to look at how we turn that around so we can bring in more outstanding leaders and get more teachers wanting to come to Bradford to work.”