FOR A woman who reached the top her profession this was a returning to roots exercise for the educationalist.

Back to the third poorest country in the world, to the Tanzania of her childhood and the plateau town of Dodoma, where teachers busied themselves with end of term assessments.

The staff room was a shady tree, chairs the sun-scorched earth.

In the five decades since Angela Monkman Brushett lived here much had happened around the globe, and to the woman named North West's highest achiever.

The Third World school, pupils, teachers and surroundings had been caught in a time warp of poverty and deprivation.

But warm winds of change were beginning to blow.

Tanzania's world debt has been reduced by 50 per cent.

With more money in its coffers, the government is anxious to take the country forward and one British charity is intent on helping.

"BESO," jokes Angela, "is a sort of geriatric VSO."

British Executive Service Overseas has already given technical and managerial advice in more than 146 countries, with volunteers completing over 7,000 assignments.

Angela is the sort of person BESO likes on its books.

One of the leading independent education management consultants in the North, an OFSTED inspector, founder and chair of a highly successfully women in business forum, the former English teacher seized the chance to go back to Africa.

Back in her Lindale home, she talks about the challenge in helping Dodoma introduce universal education for all children between the ages of seven and 11 and in finding funding.

The woman raggle-taggle Tanzanian waifs dubbed "Mamma Angela" was shocked to see a system resembling England before the 1944 Education Act.

"Conditions would have our teachers running away screaming.

Up to 103 pupils to one teacher in a single classroom, which didn't have enough desks for 40.

Whole communities live in poverty.

Poverty is the norm."

The irony is Angela lived in the very same town, as a young girl, and had a privileged, colonial education, which shaped and enriched her life.

Her father went out to East Africa in 1947, as a railway manager.

Tanzania had been a German colony until it was confiscated by the League of Nations at the end of the last world war.

"I went to a prep boarding school in southern Tanzania.

We had to go before the rains started and stay there two or three months at a time.

I was a child of Africa.

"School was very strict, rigid, Germanic, a mix of classical English and African culture."

Called to meals by the sound of drums, Angela recalled keeping chameleons in her dorm locker, and sleeping under mosquito nets.

She had learned Swahili from the street children around her home and became fluent.

On her return trip the native tonque filtered back, from "some hidden compartments in my neuro-linguistic brain cells".

Secondary school for Angela involved a 1,000-mile air trip to Nairobi, to one of the top ten seats of learning in the Commonwealth.

It was the time of the Mai Mau uprising, when Kenyans were revolting against British rule.

"My African education moulded me.

It was very structured and very analytical."

Tanzania has suffered the turbulence, violence and uncertainty of its post-independent African neighbours.

While primary education was free to all children in the 1970s, parents since that time have had to pay school fees, for uniforms and books.

It has put basic education out of the reach of many families.

According to the UN, half Tanzania's population lives below the poverty line.

The average income is only 200 dollars a year.

Illiteracy is increasing at the rate of two per cent a year and two million children cannot attend classes.

Schools are crumbling, classes are huge and books in pathetically short supply.

Only 15 per cent go on to secondary school and just one per cent makes it to higher education.

Infant mortality is among the highest in the world, a third of under fives are malnourished and the 800,000 Aids cases confirmed in October 2000 grows ever higher.

Angela is committed to working for sponsorship to continue BESO's work in Tanzania.

Describing herself as "semi-retired, but still batting", she is calling on old contacts at Mosaic, the highly successful Bolton women in business forum she founded for support.

"BESO' s work in Tanzania is vital," concluded Angela.

"I feel highly privileged to be included in the team."