Specialist schools achieved better GCSE results last year

The Commons Education Select Committee said not enough research existed to show the programme was based on "secure foundations".

It urged ministers to withhold extra cash from specialist schools if standards were not rising in "partner" comprehensives, dubbed "bog standard" by the prime minister's official spokesman.

Specialist schools date back to the creation of business-sponsored City Technology Colleges in the late 1980s.

Better GCSE results

The first to be given that label appeared in 1994. When Labour came to power in 1997 it decided to expand the programme to improve standards.

Specialisms include sport, the arts, business and enterprise, maths, science and music.

Last summer, 54.1% of specialist school pupils gained five A* to C grades at GCSE, compared with 46.7% at ordinary comprehensives.

There are now almost 1,000 such schools and by 2006 that should have doubled on the way to a fully specialist system at an unspecified future date.

Schools bidding to take on the status have to raise �50,000 in sponsorship and put together a four-year development plan for raising standards in all subjects.

If successful, they receive a grant of �100,000 plus �123 per pupil per year more than ordinary comprehensives.

Specialist schools are allowed to select up to 10% of their pupils by "aptitude" for that subject, although Department for Education and Skills (DfES) figures showed only about 6% did so.

Critics say this and the funding difference create divisions between state schools.

But a DfES spokeswoman said specialist schools' exam results "speak for themselves".

She added that they outperformed ordinary comprehensives at GCSE by 4.5%, when pupil intake was taken into account.

The spokeswoman said: "These results are supported by independent evidence from [the education watchdog] Ofsted and the Specialist Schools Trust, which confirmed specialist status helps accelerate the pace of school improvement."

Paul Holmes, Liberal Democrat MP for Chesterfield and the party's sole member of the committee, said all the head teachers he had spoken to said privately that the only reason they applied for specialist status was they wanted the extra money.

John Dunford, general secretary of the Secondary Heads Association, said: "The specialist schools programme is much better than it was.

"It's now more inclusive and there's the opportunity for all schools to apply. That makes a very big difference, plus the funding cap is being removed.

"The real research I want to see is the effect of specialist schools on the area as a whole.