Companies were invited to fund new schools, which would effectively be independent, able to set their own curriculum and experiment with new teaching methods. But only 15 were created and big-name donors were hard to come by. Specialist schools were seen as a more acceptable way to involve business and Labour, far from abandoning the initiative, has expanded it. Arts, languages, science - these are things I'd expect all schools to cover. Any state secondary can apply for specialist status, but a school would have to be confident of success before beginning the process.
Schools have to submit a three-year plan outlining how they propose to raise standards.
Schools are expected to make efforts to raise as much as they can locally, but a safety net exists for schools in poorer areas. For the additional funding - worth about half a million pounds over three years. A recent report by the London School of Economics concluded that the popularity of the programme among heads was largely related to the extra money. More than half the heads questioned by LSE admitted that their supposed specialism was not in fact the school's strongest teaching area, and the same number said that extra funding had been their primary motive for becoming a specialist school. I don't fancy complicating my housing arrangements by being forced to choose whether to live in an arty, business-like or Francophile catchment area.