Not a lot of people know this, but 1999 marks the centenary of the creation of the Board of Education.

This marked a big step towards the centralising of power over schools, with a single authority, headed by the Minister of Education, taking over from several existing bodies.

It is perhaps appropriate that we go into this centenary year with a government that is centralising control over education to an extent never known before in Britain.

The government has created a more centralised education system

Even the last Conservative government, which created the National Curriculum, did not go so far as to tell teachers how to plan their maths and English lessons. The literacy and numeracy hours do that down to the last five minutes.

So 1999 will see primary schools continuing to get to grips with the literacy hour and preparing for the introduction of the additional numeracy hour next September.

After the dual onslaught from Tony Blair and Chris Woodhead, schools will no doubt be double-checking that they are stressing the use of phonics and have dusted off their mental arithmetic tests.

Targets

The year will also see schools and local education authorities checking progress towards their first set of targets for GCSEs and the national tests. The 1999 results will be an important indicator of whether schools are on course for their targets for the year 2000.

Ministers will also start to bite their nails over progress towards the government's high-profile national targets for 11-year-olds in English and maths.

Pressure will grow for schools to achieve the government's targets for tests

A four to five percentage point increase is needed each year to reach the targets. If the 1999 results repeat the faltering progress of 1998, there could be panic and a search for scapegoats.

Political opponents will be watching carefully to see whether the government can continue its progress in reducing class sizes in infant schools. The target of no classes above 30 by 2002 still looks manageable, but much will depend on the success of teacher recruitment strategies.

This brings us onto the biggest test for 1999: the implementation of the Green Paper on the reform of teaching. Much detail still has to be put in place ready to take effect in the financial year 2000/01. Come the summer, applications to teacher training courses will be carefully watched for any signs of an upsurge of interest.

The bold and radical proposals for performance-related pay were linked with the promise of enough new money to satisfy most of the teachers' unions. But the real challenge comes in the technical details of how the "school bonus" money and funds for performance-pay will be shared out among individual schools. This is where it could become very controversial.

Grammar schools

Ministers can at least feel they are in the driving seat on the Green Paper, but there is another issue on which they will be forced to watch from the sidelines. The year ahead will see moves by the anti-selection lobby for ballots to convert the remaining grammar schools into comprehensives.

The hurdles to be overcome are high, but there are bound to be campaigns in several parts of the country. In particular, Kent will be closely watched as it has a quarter of the country's grammar schools.

It could all embarrass the government, as any threat to the grammar schools will be interpreted by some as a Labour assault on high educational standards. That is the very message the government's "spin doctors" wish to avoid.

Not much has been heard about the education action zones since the first 12 were set up in September. A further 13 will start up in January, and ministers will be hoping they begin to show greater innovation in areas such as employing highly-paid "super teachers", extending the school day and year, and involving the private sector.

The teachers' unions, while carefully monitoring progress on the Green Paper, will have more immediate concerns over the 1999 pay rise. The School Teachers' Review Body will report early in the year, but with performance-related pay over the horizon it is unlikely to make radical proposals.

The big question will be whether the government has taken the teacher recruitment crisis seriously enough to ensure they fund the pay rise in full, without staging payments to teachers' pay packets.

In summary, 1999 should be a year of consolidation for the government as it enters the middle period of its term in office. But the teacher shortage has the potential to knock it off all its many targets. Teachers' pay and recruitment will be the key areas to watch.