High-flyers to help bright pupils

Teach First Advocates are going to be helping gifted pupils win sought-after university places. Teach First puts exceptional graduates into tough schools and the new scheme aims to use them to raise pupils' aspirations.

Andrew Adonis, Schools Minister at the Department for Children, Schools and Families, explains.

Everyone remembers their inspirational teachers, those passionate, dedicated individuals who took a real interest and encouraged their students to do their very best.

The Teach First programme - which we are expanding today - recruits and trains hundreds of the highest achieving graduates straight from university each year, placing them in city secondary schools where they often make a transformational difference.

Teach First is a business-led initiative, first launched in London in 2003 and now being rolled out to other cities, which trains and support high achieving graduates to work for at least two years in city secondary schools.

After two years they can decide whether to stay in teaching or to move on, often to work for Teach First's blue-chip business sponsors. More than half stay on beyond the initial two years and all remain lifelong "ambassadors" for the programme.

Ofsted last week praised Teach First for its "notable impact in transforming underperforming (school) departments". The programme is producing exceptional teachers who have the ambition and skills to raise the aspirations of students - and even fellow teachers - fundamentally.

Enthusiasm

This year Teach First aims to recruit more than 400 teachers. It has multiple applications for each place, and has already made more than 60 offers to students from Oxford and Cambridge. London, Manchester, Durham, Edinburgh and Warwick are among other universities with large numbers of successful applicants.

I recently met a group of first year Cambridge students who had gained places on Teach First and was deeply impressed by their enthusiasm for the programme. They all told me they would not otherwise have considered a stint in teaching.

But there is always more we can do to help bright children from disadvantaged backgrounds, which is why I am today announcing a new role for Teach First - the Teach First Advocates Programme.

Teach First Advocates will mentor gifted and talented pupils in state secondary schools in the cities to help them set their sights on the most sought after courses at university.

The advocates will either be serving Teach First teachers, or ex-Teach First teachers now in other employment and keen to make a continuing contribution to education.

'Poverty of aspiration'

This expanded Teach First programme is part of a new £15m government initiative to raise the aspirations and attainment of bright children from disadvantaged backgrounds in London.

The 18-month pilot programme will begin in the capital, involving at least 20 London schools and post-16 institutions with special mentoring for more than 60 disadvantaged gifted and talented students. Some 2,000 students will benefit from additional whole class and year group sessions.

There has been much talk of the need to overcome the "poverty of aspiration" in disadvantaged communities.

For some, the very idea of higher education is alien; others do not set their sights beyond their local university. That is where the Teach First Advocate will come in.

The advocates exemplify the value of degree-level education and what can be achieved by intelligent, hard working young people - whatever their background.

With their knowledge of the most competitive universities, the advocates can guide gifted and talented pupils to the right courses for them.

This is part of our commitment to break the link between deprivation and underachievement. It is also a significant new mission for Teach First, building on its outstanding early success.

The Liberal Democrats said the Teach First Advocates scheme would not succeed unless more bright children from deprived backgrounds were recognised and supported.

They said young people from low income families were only half as likely as other children to be in the gifted and talented programme.

Liberal Democrat children, schools and families spokesman David Laws said this was disturbing.

"If more children from deprived backgrounds aren't identified in the first place, today's announcement will make little difference.

"We need to consider whether an inflexible central government scheme of this type is really necessary. Why can't we give schools the freedom to deliver for all children of all abilities?"