Universities invited to run city academies

Ministers are to publish a prospectus setting out how they can follow the example set by University College London, which is bidding to run an academy in Camden scheduled to open in 2011.

But teachers are demanding to know why academics who normally teach adults are qualified to run an inner-city school.

UCL has promised "high academic and personal standards for pupils and a commitment to developing individual potential" at its academy, which would specialise in maths, science and foreign languages.

Provost Malcolm Grant said: "At a time when it is recognised that the UK suffers from a shortage of students qualified in mathematics, science and languages, UCL would put these subjects at the heart of the curriculum, drawing on our expertise and resources in these areas," and make the school an, "internationally renowned specialist centre of excellence." The academy would share a site with a new special school in Swiss Cottage.

It would expose pupils who may not have otherwise considered doing a degree to "life at university from a young age", with regular masterclasses, seminars and summer schools at UCL. Students from the university would act as "mentors" to pupils.

The National Union of Teachers, which opposes academies, said it would destabilise local comprehensives and cream off the brightest pupils in the borough.

Kevin Courtney, secretary of the NUT in Camden, said UCL should work with all the state secondary schools in the borough.

"It will damage education because it will damage other schools," he warned.

But Professor Grant insisted UCL would not be limiting its aid to just one school but would collaborate closely with several.

He added that he believed universities had much to learn from local schools, "at a policy level - on issues such as widening participation, the impact of admissions policies, and transition between school and university."

The Government's prospectus makes clear that, unlike the millionaire businessmen who dominated the sponsorship of academies in the early part of the programme, universities do not have to put up £2 million.

Mr Courtney said: "Now they've given up on entrepreneurs and they are going for the educational DNA of private schools and UCL. But they are not experts - where is the evidence that universities will run a good secondary school?"

Other places which have said they might sponsor academies include both Imperial College and Queen Mary College of the University of London, and the universities of Manchester and Kent.

The move comes after schools minister Andrew Adonis published a parallel document for independent schools urging them to sponsor academies - or convert to academy status themselves in inner-city areas where places are in short supply.

Lord Adonis said he wanted to make use of independent schools' "educational DNA" to raise standards in the state sector.