City's schools to be run on 'Oxbridge' system

State secondary schools will be run along the lines of the Oxbridge university model under a scheme being launched by the country's largest urban education authority.

Birmingham is to become the first home for the revolutionary cluster arrangements for secondary schools, which are about to be introduced nationwide by the Government. It will open two new-style "collegiate academies" – each with up to six schools – from September.

The idea is the brainchild of Professor Tim Brighouse, the city's Chief Education Officer, and puts flesh on the bones of the scheme announced last week by Estelle Morris, the Secretary of State for Education and Skills. Under the Birmingham project, clusters will build on the Government's specialist schools programme with schools developing different specialities, so all pupils gain access to top-quality facilities and teaching in every subject. The clusters will also help to break down racial and religious barriers, with church schools holding joint lessons with other schools in the group.

Professor Brighouse told The Independent yesterday: "If you keep in your mind's eye the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and London and the way they operate, you will get an idea of how the schools will operate. Students at the university all belong to a college but also to the university, too."

Professor Brighouse is optimistic some of the country's leading grammar schools – those that are members of Birmingham's King Edward foundation which regularly come near the top of exam performance league tables – will want to become part of the "collegiate academy" scheme.

He is planning to launch two schemes by September after successfully bidding for £400,000 cash backing from the Department of Education and Skills. Ms Morris, a Birmingham MP, believes the project could become a model for the kind of cluster arrangements she outlined in a keynote speech to the North of England education conference last week.

Under the Birmingham scheme, a board of headteachers would be set up for the cluster, with one head being appointed president. The position could then be rotated. Ms Morris envisaged other clusters could appoint elite superheads to run all the schools as "strategic managers".

Professor Brighouse said: "I am absolutely certain that some of the grammar schools will want to come in on the scheme and I am absolutely certain some of our own schools will want to do it."

He said the scheme offered a way forward to urban education authorities "where secondary schools are not so far apart" to offer better opportunities and standards to pupils.

He said the academies could range from "loosely coupled" clusters of schools to "tightly coupled" clusters. A loose arrangement could mean schools running professional development courses jointly for all their teaching staff, or joint master-classes in different subject areas for the most gifted pupils from each of the schools.

"Tightly coupled" schools could offer a range of different specialities to pupils and share teaching expertise.