The Government wants to effect a revolution in state education, and that cannot come cheap. For David Blunkett there is going to be no cut-price route to success.. Does William Hague think that he is somehow imbibing wisdom by peregrinating round the national periphery, as if political reality can be found "out there", like truth in The X Files? Well, how much reality there is in a Cornish theme park is a matter for debate, but there probably isn't a lot at the end of a water chute. How much of this will be reserved for pay, in addition to the notional two-and-a-bit per cent that will be entered into support grant calculations? It does not look as if the total sum available for the refreshment of teacher pay prospects and re-structuring the grading system is going to be adequate. But so is praise, and pay for a job subjected - now, at last - to close and critical inspection of a kind many other professionals and the occupants of a host of other less demanding jobs manage to avoid.So it is back to money.

According to the official calculations behind the pounds 2.3bn extra for education announced in Gordon Brown's July budget, around pounds 1bn ought to be available to local authorities for improving standards. A lot of cudgelling is needed, whether or not his figure of 15,000 "bad teachers" is precisely right. There is a lot of work to be done in fleshing it out, questions yet to be answered about how such pedagogical heroines and heroes are to be identified. In most schools, however, the evidence of good or bad performance is clear-cut enough to convince even the most blinkered union rep.The quid pro quo has to be a faster track towards the removal from the schools of teachers who cannot control their charges or deliver on the attainment front. As even Chris Woodhead seems recently to have recognised, managing educational improvement in England and Wales is a subtle blend of sticks and carrots. This, in principle, is exactly what is wanted: a way of paying good teachers to remain in the classroom.

The most important of these is the creation of a new grade - an "advanced skills" or "super" teacher. Perhaps the local authorities and the heads will all sing from his song sheet, but there is no guarantee of harmony. In arguing with his Cabinet colleagues for more money Mr Blunkett's case is necessarily weakened because he cannot assure them that his aims will be achieved.Meanwhile the Government will ask the pay review body to bear all kinds of considerations in mind. They may choose to spend the official proportion of their grant on schools, they may choose even to augment it. But those decisions are up to them just as heads and governors control the detail of which teacher gets what. What all this means is that David Blunkett cannot directly effect - or lubricate - changes that ensure teachers get paid for work out of hours, such as homework and holiday clubs. A notional sum for schools, which itself contains a notional sum to meet a hypothetical teachers' pay settlement, enters the global amount for 1998-99 allocated local authorities in their block grant in the autumn.