Poor pupils funded by tycoon secure top grades

The success of the scheme will lead to pressure on the Government to reconsider its opposition to subsidising promising youngsters from poor backgrounds to attend private schools.

This summer's GCSE candidates at Belvedere School in Liverpool were the first cohort to have been selected by academic ability alone rather than on their parents' ability to pay up to £6,930 a year in fees.

Their success comes as this year's result show a comprehensive that insists its pupils take 16 GCSEs was ranked the top state school in the country. Thomas Telford, a privately sponsored City Technology College, beat all the grammar schools after it pupils scored the equivalent of almost 13 A* each in their exams, a point score of 744.5.

It was just one of two comprehensives to achieve the top ranking of 100 per cent of pupils getting at least five A* to C grade passes. The other was Brooke Weston in Corby, Northamptonshire, also a City Technology College. The fees of the girls at Belvedere were paid by Sir Peter Lampl, the multi-millionaire philanthropist, through his charity the Sutton Trust, after he became concerned about underachievement of bright students from poor families in the UK.

Sir Peter yesterday called on the Government to extend the project, arguing that it was the only way of ridding Britain of the "unparalleled education apartheid" that made it difficult for children from poorer backgrounds to succeed. The school's analysis of its results suggested that its pupils had achieved much better GCSE results at Belvedere than they would have elsewhere.

Almost two thirds of GCSE exam entries at Belvedere were awarded the top A* or A grades yesterday - a rise of seven percentage points on the previous year. Seventy per cent of pupils now have all or part of their fees paid by the Sutton Trust, suggesting that they would not have been able to attend the school without the scheme.

"The under-achievement of bright children from poor families in this country is an issue of national concern. We urge the government to build on the success of Open Access at the Belvedere and extend the scheme on a voluntary basis to 100 or more independent day schools. This would lead to the removal of the unparalleled educational apartheid which exists in this country."

Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research, Buckingham, which has evaluated the Open Access Scheme since it began five years ago, said: " The sadness is that only a few girls are able to benefit from The Belvedere alone. The government should be looking to develop the scheme nationally."

This summer almost all Belvedere's GCSE candidates (98.7 per cent) achieved at least five C grade passes, compared with 92 per cent the previous year. The school also used ability tests taken by all new girls when they entered the school aged 11 to calculate the "value added" by time at the school. The results of these tests had predicted that only one per cent of GCSEs taken in the key subjects of English literature, English language and mathematics would have been awarded an A* grade. In reality 18 per cent of entries were. A spokeswoman for the school said: "This 17 percentage point difference demonstrates considerable added value at Belvedere."

Meanwhile, at Thomas Telford, the head teacher, Sir Kevin Satchwell said all its pupils had to enter at least one intermediate vocational qualification - the equivalent of four GCSE's - as part of their 16 GCSE's. He said this was part of the school's policy of broadening learning options.

Ninety-eight per cent of all pupils also obtained top grade A* to C grade passes in mathematics and English, he added.

Head who inspired Lenny Henry celebrates

William Atkinson. Headteacher

The black "superhead" who inspired a BBC school drama starring Lenny Henry has been celebrating after his school more than doubled its GCSE results.

The Phoenix School, in Hammersmith and Fulham, west London, saw its results improve from 28 per cent achieving five good passes last summer to 60.7 per cent this year. It pioneered the Government's FreshStart initiative under which failing schools are closed and reopened with a new name and staff.

Nationally just over half of pupils achieve five good GCSE passes. This makes Phoenix's achievement of 60.7 per cent all the more remarkable given the deprived inner-city area that the school serves.

It caters for 50 nationalities and 47 languages in the school. Many pupils are refugees and high numbers are eligible for free school meals, an indicator of poverty .

William Atkinson, who inspired the Lenny Henry character in the 1999 BBC series Hope and Glory, has spent the past decade working to turn the school around after it was reopened as Phoenix in 1995. But it has had setbacks: Ofsted ruled it had "serious weaknesses" in 1999.

Mr Atkinson said: "We are just delighted at these results. The challenge now is to maintain these results and to build on them in the future. We don't want this to be a one off." He said there had been no "magic bullet" and that pupils and teachers had worked extremely hard to achieve the results.