New rooms, new uniform, new lessons: how a state school bought into the academy ethos

On the first day of term at a state-financed secondary school, this was not what you would expect. The 860 pupils were all resplendent in a blue uniform designed by the London College of Fashion; the new all-weather football pitch was being cared for by the ground staff of Queen's Park Rangers Football Club; the Royal Ballet School was on hand to help out with lessons in the new dance studio; and Hugh Hudson, director of the film Chariots of Fire, was there to give pupils information about a free screening of his film - designed to boost their sporting confidence. One of the new school's specialisms is sport.

Welcome to the brave new world of the Government's city academies - inner-city schools partly sponsored by private capital with a majority state input, which will be run as independent state schools by their sponsors.

The £18m Capital City Academy had £2m found by its sponsor Lowe & Partners Worldwide, whose founder, Sir Frank Lowe, is sports agent to the stars and chairman of Queen's Club (tennis, not football). The rest came from the Department for Education and Skills. It is a specialist arts and sports school that replaces a run-down and failing state secondary school, Willesden High School in north-west London.

Charles Clarke, the Secretary of State for Education who taught maths at Willesden High in the 1970s, would have given his eye teeth for the kind of facilities that pupils at the Capital City Academy will enjoy.

So would have Max Morris, the ex-Communist president of the National Union of Teachers widely credited (or blamed, depending on your point of view) for instilling a new spark of militancy into the teachers' unions when he was head of the same school just a few years earlier.

And it was all quite mind- boggling for Franklyn Asante, 15, a pupil who had been taught for the past four years in the crumbling buildings of the old high school. "This is just nothing like the old school," he said. "It is amazing. You were always aware of the condition of the buildings in the old school."

The new school - next door to the old school buildings, which will be demolished later this year - has been designed by Norman Foster, one of the world's leading architects.

Yesterday, after an opening delayed by building work, many of the pupils seemed in awe of the shopping-mall wide corridors with classrooms leading off them as they made their way into the assembly hall for the inaugural gathering, where Sir Frank told them: "The environment does have a dramatic effect on a place and the people in it."

Frank Thomas, the new principal of the school for the 11-19 age group, added: "Students who are in this hall today were being taught in physical conditions which should never have been tolerated. Even in those conditions remarkable things were done, though. The remarkable transformation here is more that just a physical change, it is an exciting change for us all. It will bring an educational transformation."

The school will be one of the first inner-city ones financed by the state to adopt the International Baccalaureate (IB) as the main exam for its sixth- formers. The aim is that most of this year's first year - its 11-year-olds - will take the IB rather than A-levels when they graduate to the sixth form.

Mr Thomas had the air yesterday of a man who could not believe his luck. He had been brought into Willesden High to turn round a failing school three years ago - only to be told a few weeks later that it was to be transformed into one of the first city academies.

Mr Thomas says all its facilities will be offered to neighbouring schools to use.

The Government plans to open about 60 city academies, half in London, and allow them to experiment with the education they offer.