Specialist schools are not enemy of equality, says Blair

The Prime Minister launched a passionate defence of his education reforms yesterday – including the massive expansion of specialist schools – saying they were the route to, rather than the enemy of, social equality.

Tony Blair also announced that Charles Clarke, the Secretary of State for Education, would unveil further measures to increase the number of specialist schools later this week.

Mr Clarke is expected to make specialist status easier for schools to achieve after complaints from headteachers who had struggled to raise the £50,000 in private sponsorship currently required. There are 1,007 specialist schools, up from 262 in 1997. The Government aims to have at least 2,000 specialist schools by 2006.

Last year, Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister's official spokesman, angered headteachers by describing the Government's reform of secondary schools as signalling the end of the "bog-standard" comprehensive.

But yesterday Mr Blair told the Technology College Trusts' annual conference in Birmingham that "enormous damage" had been done over the past 30 years by ideological arguments over the future of the comprehensive system.

The debate was too often painted as being between "elitism versus equality", he said. "Specialist schools have driven forward opportunity and excellence, not one at the expense of the other. Reform is not the enemy of social justice, but the route to it."

He argued that specialist schools had not "shut deprived children out of excellence but given them access to it".

The success of specialist schools showed any fears his reforms would create a two-tier system were "groundless".

David Miliband, minister for School Standards, told the conference that not all specialists schools were successful. He warned: "We need to be honest about low-performing specialist schools: specialism does not guarantee high value-added."

He hinted that the Government planned to relax the requirement for schools applying for specialist status to raise £50,000 in private sponsorship. "£50,000 is a large sum anywhere, but it can be especially difficult to find partners in areas of economic disadvantage. That's why we are looking at how we can make sure there are not artificial blockages in the system," he said.