It was the year when education ministers said they would spend £35m to enable thousands of pupils to spend a penny in the warm, by announcing the elimination of the outside toilets still left in about 600 primary schools.

It was also the year when local government officials warned teachers against putting sun tan cream on pupils, in case they ended up being accused of sexual abuse.

The government promised this year to radically reform the pay structure for teachers

And in the last 12 months our MPs did what Polish authorities did more than 300 years ago, by banning corporal punishment in all our schools. It had remained legal in private schools.

But those were perhaps the quirkier moments of the last year which, for education, saw a relentless stream of government initiatives aimed at raising standards.

For most of the time, education ministers set the agenda and much of the agenda involved setting targets.

The prime minister's social exclusion unit investigated truancy and school expulsions and recommended that the number of truants and school exclusions should be reduced by a third by the year 2002.

In January, every education authority in England was obliged to agree targets for raising standards in reading and writing. Low performing areas will have to get at least 70% of their 11-year-olds up to the required standard in English tests by the year 2002.

That means some areas will have to double their success rate. Other areas that are already doing well will aim for 90% - an equally ambitious goal.

Test results down

The government has set a goal for the year 2001 that no five, six or seven-year-old will be in a class larger than 30 by that date. Class sizes for infants began to fall, but some schools have reported that classes for pupils aged eight to 11 are still too large, and in some cases growing .

Test results reminded the government that there was still much to do before all its targets were met

The government has also promised that 80% of all 11-year-olds will have reached the expected standard in English by 2002, and that 75% will have achieved the same in maths by that date.

A reminder of how brave (or foolish, depending on your perspective) those targets are came in the summer with this year's national test results for 11-year-olds. Although the English marks improved (65% of 11-year-olds reached the required standard, compared with 63% the previous year), the maths results fell off (from 62% down to 59%).

Education ministers could conceal their blushes with the fact that this was the first year 11-year-olds were formally tested on mental arithmetic. They have until the year 2002 to learn their tables, as does Stephen Byers, erstwhile education minister who moved on to be Chief Secretary at the Treasury - even though when asked last January on BBC Radio 5 Live the answer to seven times eight, he replied: "54".

It did him no harm: following the hasty departure of Peter Mandelson, Mr Byers has now been promoted to Trade Secretary.

In July there were a few more clever bits of mathematics, when the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, announced the results of his comprehensive review of public spending.

Health and education turned out to be the main beneficiaries, but while the extra money for schools will be substantial, it won't be as big as it may have seemed at first.

Ministers announced that education would get an extra £19bn over the next three years, but that's a cumulative figure - adding each year's new increase to the previous years' increases. If you add up only the new increases introduced each year, you get the more realistic total of £10bn over the next three years.

New Labour's manifesto promised to raise the proportion of national income spent on education. Gordon Brown's "windfall" will achieve this - the proportion should grow from just under 5% in the last year of the Conservative government to 5% for the first term of the New Labour government.

That is good news for underfunded schools, but there is still room for improvement - in 1993, we were spending 5.3% of our national income on education.

Private sector

It was quite a good year for any private companies which might want to get involved in state education. Surrey County Council became the first education authority in Britain to invite bids from the private sector to run one of its failing schools.

And in his speech to Labour's annual conference, the prime minister urged teachers to support moves to involve private firms in the management of the nation's schools.

But the actual role for business in the government's education action zones fell short of expectations. The zones, announced in June, will be the focus of extra resources and bright ideas to raise standards.

At least some, it was expected, would be led by a business - but so far, none of the zones have turned out to be quite so radical. However, it seems this government does see a role for the private sector in its education crusade.

The finale of the year was the announcement of plans for a new pay scheme for teachers. It aims to allow some teachers, who have reached a salary ceiling, to break through and start earning more money linked to their performance. There will also be cash bonuses to reward teachers, channelled into the budgets of schools which get consistently good results.

A big test of the new scheme's success will be its impact on the worryingly small numbers of good graduates opting to join the profession.

New Labour has just completed its first full calendar year in power and in charge of our schools. It has been a year of laying foundations and the first building blocks.

So far, Labour has found few really damning critics. Twelve months from now we will be in a better position to judge how well the structure is holding up.