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Bright pupils to receive vouchers for extra lessons

This article is more than 17 years old

A voucher system to provide extra lessons for the brightest 10% of children in England is being introduced in schools, the Department for Education and Skills said today.

The initiative will help an estimated 800,000 pupils who will be able to spend their vouchers on additional courses, "master classes" at university-run summer schools or online evening classes.

The scheme, an extension of the government's National Academy of Gifted and Talented Youth, which has run into passive resistance from a sizeable minority of schools, is being promoted by Lord Adonis, the schools minister and former No 10 adviser.

He has been infuriated that 30% of secondary schools have not registered pupils with the academy and 20% said they had no gifted children.

Lord Adonis is telling schools in England to identify the brightest 10% of pupils in the annual January census.

His department is in negotiations over the voucher scheme with the Centre for British Teachers (CfBT), a not-for-profit education company that runs the NAGTY.

Each pupil will initially receive 151 credits, which act as vouchers towards extra lessons. A pupil could, for instance, buy a summer school place for 100 credits or an evening online course for 50 credits.

According to today's Daily Telegraph, pupils could even buy web-based courses drawn up by Nasa, the US space agency.

Currently, just 5% of pupils achieving top marks in national curriculum tests for 11-year-olds (about 200,000 children) are eligible for funding under the gifted and talented programme based at the University of Warwick.

The new project would select the brightest 10% in each school, regardless of how many pupils met the present criteria, the paper added.

CfBT, if it secures the contract, will invite companies, independent schools, universities and other educational bodies to offer activities for an agreed fee.

The Conservative party recently ditched plans to give parents a flat-rate voucher of £5,000 a year to spend at the school of their choice - state or private.

An initial £65m has been earmarked for the credit system, with extra money coming from the government's existing £930m "personalised learning" programme.

Schools Minister Lord Adonis said: "All schools should identify their full gifted and talented population in the forthcoming school census."

He added: "The national register set up earlier this year will enable thousands more gifted and talented children to be identified, especially late developers and those underachieving because of social disadvantage. This register will ensure they are identified early and get the appropriate learning opportunities inside and outside school."

Tim Emmett, the development director for CfBT, said: "The government is seeing this as part of school improvement rather than a lifeboat for a few bright children. If you can raise the meter for 10% of children in a school you can do it for the other 90% as well."

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