Tim Brighouse, Birmingham's chief education officer, is putting £15,000 into a radical scheme for a 'University of the First Age' in an attempt to transform the education of disaffected inner city youngsters.
He believes that secondary schools which give pupils a short residential experience in the first year will find better relationships and lower truancy rates in subsequent years. Schools offering a voluntary extra lesson each week would 'energise' staff because they were teaching volunteers.
His 'university' would build on such experiments by setting up networks of specialist teachers in urban areas in science, the arts, maths, English and media. These lessons would be backed up by two week summer schools devoted to transforming the expectations and speed of learning of youngsters.
Similarly in Tower Hamlets, for the summer of '95, the local education authorities, supported by Michael Young and the Institute of Community Studies, are launching a 'Summer University' (tel 0171 426 0919) with a multitude of events and courses to keep youths aged 14 to 21 out of mischief.
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