Clarke announces specialist schools expansion
The Education Secretary has said that 62 per cent of all secondary schools now have specialist status.
Charles Clarke announced today that 268 new schools have gained specialist status, taking the total number to just under 2000.
The Government is hoping that 75 per cent of all secondary schools will achieve specialist status by 2006.
To apply for the status, schools need to raise £50,000 of private sponsorship and draw up a four year plan showing how they would raise standards in their specialist areas. There are ten potential specialist areas including music, languages and mathematics.
Mr Clarke said: “The facts speak for themselves – specialists schools do better than other schools.”
Government statistics show that in 2003, 56.7 per cent of pupils in specialist schools achieved five good grades at GCSE compared to 49.2 per cent in non-specialists – a difference of 7.5 percentage points.
Mr Clarke continued: “Specialist schools are a mass movement to raise standards in every school delivering better results for every single pupil.”
“Each school is encouraged to develop their own ethos and a clear sense of responsibility for shaping its own future and I am delighted that today’s figures show we are moving faster towards our target of all schools becoming specialist.”
The announcement of the increase in specialist schools comes as the Government is poised to announce an expansion in “city academies”.
City academies remain in the state system but have far greater freedom than standard state schools, including choice over admissions policies, but they have not yet met universal approval from the teaching profession.
Dr John Dunford, general secretary of the Secondary Heads Association, said: “The Government must be cautious, however, about extending the programme of academies.
“As the latest solution to the problems facing the most difficult schools in the country, academies have some merit, but the success of the academies programme must be judged not only on the performance of schools themselves, but on the effect they have on the performance of all the schools in their localities. Academies must be part of the local family of schools and it is up to the Government to ensure that the independence given to academies does not work against the interests of other local schools.”
“Unless there are adequate safeguards, there is always a danger that choice and diversity will pit school against school.”
There are also concerns that specialist schools and city academies may cream off the best teachers and pupils, leaving other schools to struggle.
