History
The Education Reform Act 1988 introduced a new compulsory subject of Technology, but there were insufficient funds to equip all schools to teach the subject. A first attempt at developing centres of excellence, the City Technology College programme between 1988 and 1993, had produced only 15 schools. In 1994, the Conservative government, at the urging of Sir Cyril Taylor, designated 35 grant-maintained and voluntary aided schools as Technology Colleges. The schools were required to arrange private sponsorship of £100,000, and would then receive a matching government capital grant and increased recurrent funding. The following year the programme was opened to all maintained schools, and specialism in Languages was added. Specialisms in Arts and Sport were added in 1996.
As specialism implied diversity of schools, it was opposed by many supporters of comprehensive schools, including many in the Labour Party. Nevertheless, in 1997 the new Labour government, also encouraged by Sir Cyril Taylor, adopted the embryonic programme, and the number of specialist schools continued to grow. The School Standards and Framework Act 1998 made it possible for specialist schools to select up to 10% of their intake on aptitude in the existing specialisms in sport, the arts, modern languages and technology, though new selection for aptitude in technology was prohibited in 2008. However few have taken up this option.
The 2001 white paper Schools Achieving Success envisaged expansion of the programme to 50% of secondary schools by 2005, and introduced new specialisms in Business and Enterprise, Engineering, Mathematics and Computing and Science. The emphasis was shifting from centres of excellence to a means of driving up standards in most schools. The required amount of private sponsorship was halved, and could be made up of goods and services in lieu of cash. Software donations had been ineligible due to the difficulty in evaluating the true value of something that has no manufacturing cost and can simply be given away as a form of collateral, but this changed when Oracle and then Microsoft were allowed to sponsor the programme with "in kind" donations. In 2002 the government introduced the Partnership Fund, funded at £3million per annum, to make up the shortfall for schools that were unable to raise the required £50,000 of private sponsorship. Specialisms in Humanities and Music were added in 2004. By 2008 approximately 90% of maintained secondary schools had become specialist schools.
Extension of the specialist programme to primary schools is being trialled at 34 schools in England, starting in 2007. The specialisms involved in the pilot are Arts, Music, Languages, Science and Physical Education/Sport. A specialist schools programme has been trialled by the Department of Education of Northern Ireland from 2006, with 44 schools being awarded the status by September 2009.
Read more about this topic: Specialist School
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