Government challenges universities to identify and nuture talent

The Government has launched a detailed prospectus urging universities to become directly engaged in schools and academies. John Denham, Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills and Schools Minister, Lord Adonis, launched the prospectus at University College London (UCL).

The prospectus follows on from the Prime Minister’s Mansion House speech earlier this year in which he said that he would like every secondary school to have a higher education partnership. It sets out how such joint working can benefit both universities and schools with universities leading efforts to raise the aspirations of pupils, teachers and parents in order to push standards higher and support university applications.

Mr Denham welcomed more than 20 universities at UCL which are already involved in sponsoring academies with 13 having entered into partnerships with new trust schools. The prospectus encourages other universities to follow suit.

Mr Denham said: “I believe that an individual’s success should be determined by talent and hard work, not where they went to school.

“It is clear that the universities that recruit the vast majority of students from a small minority of society are missing out on a huge amount of talent.”

He also added: “In an increasingly challenging globalised world, with an ever more competitive higher education market, the prizes of success will go to those institutions that are most successful in unlocking the best talent, wherever it may be.”

The prospectus sets out three key ways that universities can get involved in the management of secondary schools by:

setting up, sponsoring and managing their own academies;
supporting an academy as a co-sponsor, bringing educational expertise and
partnering a trust school maintained by the local authority to help it expand or enhance its provision.

The prospectus also makes it clear that universities will be able to sponsor Academies without needing to make the usual £2 million sponsorship contribution.

Schools Minister, Andrew Adonis, said: “If universities get involved early on in school life, children from deprived communities become familiar with higher education and feel they belong there…..The change in sponsorship rules means that there’s now no barrier to universities applying their educational expertise, ethos and organisation to benefit a secondary school. It’s their academic excellence and commitment that we desire….Universities know what skills and attitudes they want their potential students to have and now can play a leading role in making it happen at secondary school.”

The prospectus for Academies and Universities is available from the Department for Innovation, Universities & Skills website: www.dius.gov.uk

Government challenges universities to identify and nuture talent

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