Sponsors to finance specialist schools
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Your support makes all the difference.PRIVATE investment in state education is to be extended, creating a network of specialist secondary schools, the Government will announce this week.
Fifty-one comprehensives will become specialist schools from the autumn, offering expert tuition in technology, languages, sports and the arts. This will bring the total number of schools in the controversial scheme to 330.
Under government proposals, schools have to raise pounds 100,000 in private sponsorship before receiving a matching sum from the state.
They then gain pounds 100 per pupil per annum for three years, giving some schools a total of around pounds 500,000.
By the autumn the Government will have increased the number of specialist schools by around 50 per cent from those it inherited.
Ministers have a target of reaching 450 by the end of the Parliament, but their establishment has provoked debate in the education world.
The Government plans to allow the schools to chose up to 10 per cent of their intake according to aptitude - leading to calls that selection is being reintroduced through the back door.
Ministers deny this, arguing that selection is usually geared to, for example, sporting or musical ability, rather than IQ. Estelle Morris, the junior education minister, will argue that the initiative is the key to modernising the comprehensive school system.
The Department for Education and Employment points out that 17 out of the 100 most improved secondary schools in last year's performance tables were specialist schools.
The last government set up a number of City Technology Colleges modelled on "magnet" schools in the USA. However, these failed to attract the sums of money required from the private sector.
The Labour Government's programme has put more emphasis on raising standards in inner cities.
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