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London Mayor Boris Johnson has announced the creation of a £24m fund to help drive up teaching standards in the capital.
The London Schools Excellence Fund mostly came from the Department for Education (£20m), with the mayor contributing £4.25m. It will support programmes that encourage teaching excellence and professional development for teachers across London, and spread good teaching practice.
The fund is also hoped to promote student achievement in subjects such as Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) as well as English, Literacy, Numeracy and Languages.
To get a share of the fund, schools will be encouraged to bid for grants in collaboration with each other and through partnering with charities, businesses and universities.
The fund is the first implemented recommendation following the Mayor’s Education Inquiry, an independent investigation launched to determine the successes and challenges for schools in London. The probe lasted for a year.
The Greater London Authority is also set to develop the London Curriculum, another recommendation resulting from the Mayor’s Education Inquiry. It is intended to support schools to adapt to the New National Curriculum announced last week, at the same time drawing on the city’s unique historical, cultural and scientific assets.
Mr Johnson acknowledged the ‘tremendous’ work being done in many London schools and their high expectations of their students, citing their willingness to teach ‘crunchy subjects’ like maths languages, sciences, and assign classics readings and grammar lessons. This results to children having ‘confidence and intellectual muscle’ to compete with the best students worldwide and get into highly rated universities and jobs.
The mayor wants to spread the level of ambition to all state schools in the capital, hence last year’s Inquiry from which the fund is one recommendation. He said: “The London Schools Excellence Fund is going to turbo charge good ideas, empty out pockets of underachievement, and, in the long term, ensure that outstanding teaching is the norm in all our state schools.”
Education Secretary Michael Gove welcomed the fund, saying: “There is some fantastic practice already evident in some London schools and our funding will allow those successes to be shared across the city, and galvanise the country as a whole.”
