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Thursday, 16 November, 2000, 17:58 GMT
League tables spark funding row
![]() Bacon's College: One of the most improved
Teachers' unions say the improvements in performance shown by specialist schools in this year's league tables could be achieved by all, given the same sort of extra funding.
This year's school-by-school GCSE results confirm that specialist schools in England are generally outperforming other comprehensives.
That was 10 points more than those in all other comprehensive and modern schools. The government says its targeting of deprived areas is paying off - but teachers' unions say it risks widening the gap between the best and the worst.
To become specialists, schools have to raise £50,000 in sponsorship and put in a bid to the Department for Education showing how they intend to raise standards. Targets to meet If they succeed, they get £100,000 and another £123 per pupil for four years - whereupon they can apply to renew their specialist status. Of the 109 schools which have most improved their performance since 1997, 26 are specialists - far more than their proportion among schools as a whole. Nigel de Gruchy, general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers said: "It is wholly unsurprising that specialist schools and others given additional resources are improving their results at a faster rate. "Who would not expect Manchester United to do better than their neighbours Oldham Athletic?" The most improved school is an arts specialist - The St Marylebone CofE School in central London, a girls' comprehensive. Its score of the top, A*-C grades, has gone from 39% of its pupils achieving them in 1997 to 89% this year - a 50 points improvement. The head teacher, Elizabeth Phillips, aims for excellence - but attacks the annual performance tables as promoting a sort of "academic apartheid". More on the way There are now 550 schools specialising in the arts, technology, languages or sport.
The government is committed to having 1,000 of them by 2004 - almost a third of all secondary schools. The Education Secretary, David Blunkett, also highlighted improved results at institutions which have had extra money under the Excellence in Cities programme. Mr Blunkett said some of the schools that had improved the most were to be found in deprived areas of cities such as Birmingham, Liverpool and Sheffield. Poor performers under scrutiny He confirmed he would consider closing about 100 schools in which fewer than 15% of the students are getting five A*-Cs if they do not improve over three years, as he announced in March. He said such low performance was unacceptable and promised they would be given extra resources and help to improve. He is confident most will raise their standards - pointing out that more than six hundred failing schools have been turned round since he came to office. Unions want more for all The Liberal Democrats' education spokesman, Phil Willis, said the tables "expose the failure of government policy to bridge the growing divide between high achieving and low achieving schools."
"The demoralisation of pupils, their parents and their teachers over their constant exposure to failure and criticism from the government has created a new educational underclass." The general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, David Hart, said: "Until all secondary schools are treated equally and fairly, the yawning gap between the highest and lowest will get wider and wider." The National Union of Teachers leader, Doug McAvoy, said the tables continued to penalise schools working against the odds. "Schools which have to work to overcome, for example, socio-economic deprivation, disillusion with education fed by low expectations among parents, high levels of homelessness, do not get the credit they deserve." A senior government source expressed annoyance at their comments. It was, he said, "quite disgraceful" for union leaders to be undermining schools' achievements at a time when they should be celebrated. What had made the difference in the most improved schools was not money but targets and extra support. Most improved schools
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