Invest more in urban schools, urges newly knighted headmaster

Alasdair Macdonald, head of Morpeth School in Tower Hamlets, was today celebrating becoming the latest head to be honoured for raising standards, as Gordon Brown continued Tony Blair's policy of rewarding those who achieve success in tough inner city schools.

Mr Macdonald, 58, who is in his 16th year as head of the mixed comprehensive and is now regularly consulted by ministers, warned that success in schools like his was "fragile", as they faced the full range of social problems caused by poverty and family breakdown, and required high levels of investment to sustain it.

His comments came after the Government was criticised for giving inner city authorities - many of which are Labour-controlled - more money for schools than those in the suburbs and rural counties. Schools also face a winter of discontent as teacher unions threaten industrial action unless the Government increases its two per cent pay offer.

Mr Macdonald said: "If you want to sustain improvement, you have to pay decent salaries. I think one of the reasons education has improved in London is for the last few years it has been relatively well paid."

Morpeth School is a past nominee for an Evening Standard School Award and has just been rated as "outstanding"-by education watchdog Ofsted. Last year, 49 per cent of pupils at Morpeth achieved at least five Cs or better, including in English and maths, which was above the London and national averages.

Mr Macdonald stressed that much of the school's success was down to having a stable staff - a difficult thing to achieve in London where many teachers move out of the city in order to get onto the housing ladder.

He said: "I think that, quite often, in schools in challenging areas, it's quite hard to sustain school improvement because you get staff changes. The hard bit is keeping it going. I think that what we've, over quite a few years now, managed is to do that."

Last week saw the 27th killing of a teenager on London's streets and MrMacdonald said staff in schools such as Morpeth were constantly having to emphasise that street culture should be left outside the gates and that it is "our environment" within the school's walls.

"That's a really hard thing to do," Mr Macdonald said. "What we can do is hopefully educate young people and equip them with skills - not just for learning but also social and conflict resolution skills to deal with what is out there."

He said: "But it's hard - there's a lot of violence on the street and it can tip over into school. We've got to be alert and proactive to make sure we keep that boundary, so when you cross that line it's our territory - it's about learning, and respect for people."

Mr Macdonald urged politicians and commentators to stop seeing schools as the answer to all social ills.

"I think one of the issues again that politicians are probably reluctant to face up to is that schools can't change society. We can make a contribution - and most of the schools I know in London do make a significant contribution - but we can't change society."

Mr Macdonald said his focus now was on raising aspirations among white working-class pupils and others, including African Caribbeans, where teenagers had traditionally left school at 16 to go into employment.

He said there was a range of strategies that could be targeted on groups of young people who have ability.