A DRAMATIC turnaround in Bolton primary school classrooms means no five, six or seven-year-old children are being taught in classes of more than 30 pupils.

Education secretary David Blunkett today hailed Bolton as one of only a handful of North-west towns to have already achieved the Government target.

The September, 2000 figures are a sharp improvement on the same time last year when Bolton faced one of the sternest challenges of any town in the region.

Some 1,387 infant pupils -- some 14 per cent -- were then in classes of 31 or more.

Even those figures were a stark improvement on September, 1998 when 4,443 primary school children were in larger classes.

This year only Bolton, Blackburn, Wigan, Sefton, Wirral and Halton had no infants in "over-sized" classes.

Bury had 160, Manchester 362 and Salford 292. In England as a whole 177,000 infants were being taught in plus-30 classes. The Government target is to end all such classes by 2002.

Linda Thomas, Bolton Council cabinet member for education, said: "We are delighted that we have managed to be ahead of schedule and it's obviously to the benefit of children at national curriculum key stage one.

"We put in an extra £1.6 million for additional teachers in infant classes and this was new money. It wasn't being taken from anywhere else.

"But at the end of the day cutting class sizes was a manifesto pledge and we have to keep them."

Mr Blunkett said: "Today's figures are excellent news for children."