'Boys club' makes the grades

At Falmouth High School, pupils set their own targets and mark each other's work. Richard Garner reports on a teaching regime that's shown extraordinary results

James Taylor was disappointed when he was told he could expect to get a C grade in his GCSE exam. "I was quite annoyed at that and thought it was wrong," said the 14-year-old pupil at Falmouth High School. "I was sure I could get an A or a B."

What he was told spurred him on to try harder. He has just finished the exam after taking it two years early and is now confidently expected to get an A* grade.

What happened to James is not unique. It is the way they do things at Falmouth High School and they seem to have come up with a recipe for unlocking the potential of white working class boys – a problem which has puzzled all those involved in education for many years.

Youngsters at the 1,206-pupil Cornish school set their own achievement targets, often raising them after discussion with their classmates, rather than have them imposed by teachers.

They even mark each others' work, which teachers believe can help give those marking a glimpse of how they could have tackled a problem and thus improve their understanding of the subject.

The work is checked by the teacher, but pupils can argue for a higher grade if they disagree with the mark. Assistant headteacher Sue Ferris acknowledges this can sometimes lead to her seeing something in a pupil's work that she may have missed earlier and awarding a higher grade. The pupils concede, ruefully, that they are not always successful.

James and fellow pupil Dan Spurrier, aged 13, another pupil who has taken his science GCSE early, are convinced the approach has motivated them to do better in class.

"It makes you more competitive," said James, "although you're not competitive in the sense you want to do someone else down. You're competitive against yourself."

The headteacher, Sandra Critchley, says: "It's more like being in the fitness gym when you're competing against yourself."

The school's pioneering approach is what appeals to boys at the school. As one teacher put it: "It gets their testosterone levels going." In particular, it has helped lift the horizons of white working class youngsters, something which has been notoriously difficult to achieve nationwide. Research shows they are the lowest performing ethnic group apart from the children of travellers, who often miss out on part of their education.

Take the case of Thomas McClements. His family have no history of going on to higher education. His father is a builder and his mother a cleaner.

Yet Thomas, who is 16 and just completing his GCSEs, has his sights on going to university and training to be a PE teacher.

Earlier in his school life, he was taken on a trip to Exeter University, the first time the thought of going on to higher education began to seem as if it could become a reality. "I spent a weekend there," he said. "The people I met at university were no different from me. I realised there was nothing to stop me going there.

"I was with a few students from a working class background who would not really have seen themselves as going to university. I didn't ever see it as an aspiration. Now I don't know why I'd never seen it as a possibility."

Further proof of the scheme's success is in the school's exam results. It serves a very mixed area of Cornwall. "Some people think of Cornwall as all seaside and yachts," said Ms Ferris. "Yet there are areas of deprivation here as well."

In 2005, before the new approach was introduced, only 50 per cent of Falmouth High School pupils obtained five A* to C grade passes at GCSE. Now the figure is 67 per cent. When maths and English are included, the figure rises from 41 per cent to 52 per cent. That compares with a Cornish average of 43 per cent and a national average of 47 per cent.

Ofsted, the education standards watchdog, has noticed the improvement, too. Earlier this decade the school was described as having "serious weaknesses". Now, as a result of its latest inspection, it is officially classified as a "good" school.

It would be wrong to imply that the approach – which uses all the latest technology to predict pupils' outcomes – is only of benefit to boys. Kiya Hallam, 18, another pupil from a family with no history of going on to higher education, had been quite happy to think of herself going into a relatively non-challenging career as a hairdresser before talking to fellow pupils about what she could achieve. They convinced her she should aim higher. She has now been offered places at Swansea and Southampton universities to study law.

But the school's most marked improvement has been in the achievement of boys. Its results have been so successful that four pupils, including James and Dan, were asked to deliver an address at the annual conference of Capita education services, a firm which supplies technology to the school and with which Falmouth is in partnership. Around 450 delegates from local authorities attended and several have now contacted the school to see if they can follow in its footsteps.

However, there has been no official approach from the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) to see if it could help other schools learn from Falmouth's experience. As one senior teacher put it: "Perhaps Cornwall is a bit too far for them."

That would be a pity. As a report from the Higher Education Policy Institute pointed out earlier this month, women are now ahead of men at every level of education, including good degree passes and in snapping up places at the elite Russell Group of universities.

Officials at the DCSF have been beavering away at policy initiatives to help improve the performance of white working-class boys for some time but so far the main suggestion they have come up with has been to provide them with more adventure books to read. Falmouth could offer them a few more ideas.