§ 30. Mr. BlizzardTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what assessment he has made of the success of specialist schools. [99373]
§ Ms Estelle MorrisSpecialist schools submit annual reports about progress against their targets and we monitor their examination performance compared with the performance of all other schools. Their examination success is illustrated by their average 2.5 percentage point improvement in GCSE 5 or more A* to C results between 1998 and 1999 compared with an average of 1.5 percentage points for all other schools. Research projects about the effectiveness of the specialist schools programme carried out by the London School of Economics and Leeds University will be reporting soon and will be published in the new year.