Specialist schools in the United Kingdom
Specialist schools in the United Kingdom are schools with an emphasis or focus in a specific specialised subject area, which is called a specialism, or alternatively in the case of some special schools in England, in a specific area of special educational need. They intend to act as centres of excellence in their specialism and, in some circumstances, may select pupils for their aptitude in it. Though they focus on their specialism, specialist schools still teach the full curriculum. Therefore, as opposed to being a significant move away from it, the specialism is viewed as enriching the original curricular offer of the school.
Devolution has led to different policies and concepts around specialist schools in each of the four constituent countries of the United Kingdom. In England, a near-universal specialist system of secondary education has been established, with the majority of secondary schools specialising in one or more subjects as of 2019, while in Wales and Scotland a comprehensive system has been retained, with no specialist schools in Wales and few specialist schools in Scotland. There were 12 specialist schools in Northern Ireland as of 2015.
From 1993 to 2011, specialist schools in England and Northern Ireland were granted additional government funding through the specialist schools programme. This programme limited the specialisms available to schools unless they had academy status, which is exclusive to England, and required them to raise money in private sector sponsorship before specialising. Since its discontinuation in 2011, the requirement of sponsorship and limitations on specialism have been lifted, but schools no longer gain extra funding for being a specialist school in those countries. In Scotland, specialist schools are directly funded by the government, unlike other schools which are funded by their local authority.
Definitions
In 1998, Tony Edwards of the RISE Trust said that, in the United Kingdom, a specialist school could "simply be the neighbourhood school which has decided to emphasise a curriculum strength". In 2007, Sean Coughlan of BBC News defined specialist schools as state schools which "specialise in one or more subject areas", while Alexandra Smith of The Guardian defined them as "chools that focus on a particular subject area". Channel 4 News used a similar definition to Smith's in 2010. The 2015 UK-based Oxford Dictionary of Education defines a specialist school as " secondary school which specializes in the teaching of a particular area of the curriculum", while the sixth edition of Essential Public Affairs for Journalists, an Oxford University publication from 2019, concludes that specialist school is "a catch-all term embracing each and every school with a specialism" and not a particular category of school. A specialism is a specialist school's chosen subject area of focus.Specialist colleges
Schools that gained specialist school status in the specialist schools programme could accordingly rebrand themselves as specialist schools or, alternatively, as specialist colleges. The specialist college branding was seen as a label of prestige. There were 2,000 of these specialist colleges in the United Kingdom in 2005. In the context of education after the age of 16, the term specialist college refers to institutions of further education that focus on one course or subject rather than the usual wide selection of courses. Unlike sixth form colleges with specialist school status, which still teach their specialised subject within a broader curriculum, these specialist colleges are completely based around their specialism, and their facilities and staff's specialist subject knowledge challenge those of normal schools.Special schools
Although they may be confused with each other, specialist schools have no relation to special schools. Special schools specialise in teaching special needs children rather than specific subject areas, but have been allowed to gain specialist school status since the 2000s, and many of them took an interest in possibly rebranding themselves as specialist colleges through the specialist schools programme.Some special schools in England are now specialist schools for a specific area of special educational need. There are four possible areas to specialise in: communication and interaction, cognition and learning, social, emotional and mental health, and sensory and physical needs. To specialise in one of these areas, special schools must have pupils aged 11 and above. They cannot specialise in more than one of these areas, but can further specialise within an area to reflect the special needs they help with, for example in autistic spectrum disorders or in visual impairment.
In the independent sector
In the private sector of education, there are specialist schools for the performing arts such as theatre and stage schools. There were 11 specialist theatre schools in the United Kingdom in 2014, with most of these being in London or its surrounding areas. In 2015, none of these schools were in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and neither were there any in the North East and South West of England, so most pupils had to relocate if they wished to attend one. There are also specialist preparatory schools in England.Music and Dance scheme
In 1965, a report called Making Musicians was commissioned by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. The report, which was chaired by Gilmour Jenkins, recommended the creation of new "special music schools at primary and secondary level". Following the report, four specialist independent schools for music were established, in addition to the one that was already open. In 1973 two of the five specialist schools, the Yehudi Menuhin School and the Royal Ballet Lower School, were designated as centres of excellence for the performing arts. Designation brought with it a direct grant from the Department of Education and Science and admittance into a scheme that introduced a means-test for parents similar to the one seen in the scheme for direct grant grammar schools.A second report entitled Training Musicians was commissioned by the foundation in 1978. This report evaluated the state of specialist music education and recommended "that exceptionally talented young musicians and dancers should have access to elite education, regardless of their financial circumstances". This led to the creation of the government's Music and Ballet Schools scheme in 1982. The scheme designated five independent schools across England and Scotland with specialist school status in music, and gave them and the Royal Ballet School assisted places. This meant that children who passed one of their entrance examinations could be enrolled to them without needing to pay fees, provided that their parents passed a means-test and were on low-income. Families with a higher income still had to pay fees, although the government would pay toward some of the costs. The scheme was renamed the Music and Dance scheme in 2002. Eight independent schools, including four music schools and four dance schools, along with 12 music centres and ten dance centres were participating in the scheme as of September 2022.
In the state sector
Early years: 1986–1997
City technology colleges and technology schools
In the state sector of education, specialist schools have their origin in the city technology college programme of the late 1980s, which was used by the Conservative government of the time to reduce the power of local authorities. The programme was announced at the 1986 Conservative Party Conference by Education Secretary Kenneth Baker, with plans for the creation of a pilot network of 20 new city technology colleges by 1990 being revealed. These new schools would be secondary schools with a curricular emphasis on science and technology. They would be funded jointly by the central government and industrial sponsors, who would have significant influence in the management of the schools, and controlled by educational trusts instead of the local education authorities which had funded and controlled all state schools up to this point.In 1987 the City Technology Colleges Trust, made to oversee the establishment of CTCs, was established. It was chaired by Cyril Taylor, a businessman and philanthropist whose proposal for the creation of 100 technical and technological schools to reduce rising levels of youth unemployment in January 1986 led to the creation of the CTC programme. Baker and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher tasked Taylor with overseeing the establishment of the CTCs and he had founded the trust at their request. It was responsible for finding the sites for the new schools and raising industrial money for their buildings, and all CTCs would become members of it. Taylor was also recruited by Baker as his special adviser on CTCs and specialist schools, a role he would maintain under ten consecutive education secretaries from both major political parties until 2007. The first CTCs opened the following year through the Education Reform Act 1988. These were the first specialist schools in the state sector. Their establishment marked the first phase of the specialist schools policy in England, with the government intending to introduce "relevant" subjects, primarily technology, to the general curriculum.
From 1990, the new prime minister John Major was under increasing pressure to come up with a "more Treasury-friendly" concept for specialist schools. The cost of each CTC in public money was unexpectedly high; their buildings had to be built from the ground up as LEAs refused to provide disused school buildings, which had significantly increased the cost of the programme. The government looked for an alternative way to create more specialist schools for technology and science. Its first solution was the creation of the technology schools initiative in 1991. Through this initiative, the government would reward secondary schools with a one-time capital grant for specialising in technology, though these schools still had to follow the National Curriculum. LEAs in England and later Wales could nominate one or two of their schools for the grant while grant-maintained schools and voluntary aided schools, which were largely independent of local authority control, could apply to the initiative separately. Overall, 222 schools in England and 27 schools in Wales benefited from the extra funding.
The idea of turning existing secondary schools into specialist schools for technology came from Cyril Taylor, who had proposed it in response to the government's inability to pay for the implementation of technology as a compulsory subject in all schools, which had been enforced by the Education Reform Act 1988. Taylor argued that this would allow the government to gradually pay for the subject over a long period of time, and that it would also salvage the failures of the CTC programme. Nevertheless, the programme had to be discontinued in 1993 because of the increasing economic pressures caused by Black Wednesday. Overall, fifteen CTCs were established in England while none were established in Wales. Three of these remain open in the present day, with the rest becoming academy schools in the 2000s.