Celebrities 'could inspire school pupils'

Schools should tap into the culture of local celebrities to improve the performance of white working-class children, according to the Schools minister, Jim Knight.

In an interview with The Independent, Mr Knight disclosed new figures which showed the gap in performance at GCSE between white working-class pupils and those from better-off homes was higher than for any other ethnic group.

The figures showed the percentage of white pupils on free school meals with five A* to C grade GCSE passes was 33 percentage points fewer than that for other young people.

"For other ethnic groups, it is a lower gap," he said. For Bangladeshi youngsters, for instance, the gap is just three percentage points.

"We have been improving the attainment of Afro-Caribbean youngsters by trying to understand their culture and making use of mentors from that culture who have succeeded and can act as role models," he said. "There is no reason why we should not do that for white youngsters as well and get schools to invite in people from the community who have succeeded."

He cited the example of two schools in Barking and Dagenham in east London that had already adopted this initiative Barking Abbey School, which had invited its former pupil, the singer Billy Bragg, to address the pupils, and Robert Clack Comprehensive School, which had invited the former England rugby union team coach Sir Clive Woodward, who had been brought up locally, to inspire the school's children.

In both cases, the schools had seen an above-average improvement in performance from pupils particularly boys.

Mr Knight is anxious to move towards one of the targets for the Department for Children, Schools and Families set out in the Government's comprehensive spending review reducing the attainment gap between rich and poor students.

A recent report by the Sutton Trust, the education charity set up by the millionaire philanthropist Sir Peter Lampl, revealed that social mobility in the United Kingdom had stagnated for the past 30 years with the gap in performance between young people from rich and poor homes placing it at the bottom of an international league table for social mobility along with the United States.

"I would like to see other schools following these examples and make use of these inspirational and aspirational people," he said. "These young people can succeed and these people can show them that."

Mr Knight also wants to see a drive towards getting more parents to take a greater interest in their children's education.

"There have been occasions where parents have started off working as a teaching assistant in a school, have developed qualifications and progressed to become a fully qualified teacher," he said.

The drive to use role models as mentors is just one of a number of initiatives planned by the Government to narrow the attainment gap in schools.

Others include the offer of 10 hours of extra tuition in maths and English for the bottom 5 per cent of pupils when they fall behind as well as a targeted 160m drive aimed at breaking the cycle of low performance in areas such as London, Manchester and the Black Country. Also planned is the expansion of the number of schools offering after-school tuition.

Mr Knight said: "It is worth saying that it has been a source of frustration that while we have seen steady improvement in results and general improvement in education standards across the country we've not had such an effect in reducing the attainment gap between advantaged and less advantaged pupils.

"We now have evidence that the attainment gap starts to emerge at pre-school at age 18 months. Cognitive tests start to see a divergence at that age."

As a result, ministers will also start providing up to 200,000 nursery places for two-year-olds in 2008.

Mr Knight also promised to relax by reading more in the new year 2008 has been declared national year of reading.

"If I do relax, it is by reading contemporary fiction with a little bit of Dickens throw in," he said. One of his favourite books from 2007 was My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish Nobel laureate novelist, which is set in the time of the Ottoman Empire.