Evolving from the model for the city technology college, specialist schools, with private sector sponsorship and Government funding, are secondary schools with their own choice of specialisms. They aim to improve standards at a faster rate than non-specialist schools and provide their pupils with skills for employment and higher education. From 1994, maintained schools could apply for specialist school status in modern languages, design and technology, and mathematics. The programme was expanded two years later to include sports and the arts. The Green Paper, Schools: Building on Success (2001), proposed three further specialisms: engineering, science, and business and enterprise.
Schools applying for specialist status must produce a four-year development plan, raise £50,000 by private sector sponsorship, and produce quantified performance targets. There were 181 such schools in 1997 and 650 in 2001, and the Government intends to more than double that number by 2005. One concern that has been expressed is the increasingly privileged nature of the intake of students, though local education authority specialist schools, which are increasing at a rapid rate, are less open to this charge. In January 2001 it was claimed that specialist schools were achieving about 27 per cent better results than other comprehensives. Specialist schools are allowed to select 10 per cent of their intake, by aptitude but not by ability. Critics of the scheme dislike selection and also the possibility that those comprehensive schools that do not become specialist schools may be regarded as inferior.
This is the complete article, containing 244 words
(approx. 1 page at 300 words per page).
