One of the award-winners is the Second Chance School in the Seacroft area of east Leeds.

By Gary Eason BBC News Online education staff

"A lot of our students have not been to school since they were 12 or 13," said the head of the Second Chance School, Barbara Brodigan.

"They have a lot of catching up to do.

"They have lived lives on welfare. They accept this dependency - it's the 'us and them' syndrome.

"So their attitudes can be the biggest barrier to learning."

Many of the students are referred to the school - by the employment service or social services, for instance.

Barbara Brodigan: "We have invented a whole new attitude"

They range in age from 16 to 24 - most are over 18.

But all are volunteers. Part of the school's selection process is to establish that they want to be there.

Even so they are not natural students.

Three quarters have learning difficulties. Many are second or third-generation unemployed.

"Leeds has a two-speed economy. They say it's the second fastest growing city, outside London," Barbara Brodigan said.

Dependency

"There is very low unemployment as a whole. But those jobs are going to commuters."

Most of our students suffer from multiple problems

Barbara Brodigan

Seacroft is in one of the most deprived council wards in the country. Unemployment is 7% - among young males it can be 33%.

"It's a poor environment - you only have to look around Seacroft to see that."

Mile after mile of old municipal housing stock punctuated by high-rise variations on the theme. Windswept open spaces.

The Family Learning Centre is in a dilapidated, 1960s-built former secondary school.

Drugs

It is home to four further education centres, including the city's Department of Training and part of Leeds Metropolitan University.

And, uniquely in the UK, the Second Chance School - one of two dozen across Europe, set up to cater for youngsters who got nothing from their schooling first time around.

"Often there is drug or solvent abuse in the family, and all the other social problems of violence or neglect - most of our students suffer from multiple problems," Ms Brodigan said.

Curriculum 'zones':

Learning: literacy and numeracy skills Knowledge: the skills to hold down a job, such as team working and customer service Technology: multimedia and commercial computer skills Employment: help with seeking work Pleasure: French conversation classes, breakfast discussion groups, drama, football, day trips

To tackle all this the school says it has invented a whole new approach to learning.

"School is probably a misnomer," Ms Brodigan said. "They are young adults and we treat them as such."

There are about 50 students and six full-time staff, a ratio which allows for intensive work in small groups with a focus on the basics of the three Rs.

"It's informal, first name terms, very individualised - no fitting in to a set timetable.

"They pick and choose what they want to do and form their own learning plan from the courses on offer."

If this doesn't work, the staff change what they are doing to accommodate the students.

Information and communication technology is integrated into everything.

"Often that's the one thing they come with - because they will all have Playstations and things like that.

Heather Cox: Representing the school at the award ceremony

"Some can't read or write but can rap, so we build on that."

The Second Chance School claims a near-100% success rate in getting people back into the city's mainstream economy.

It is picking up the debris of a school system that fails to cater for the most "challenging" children - youngsters such as Heather Cox, now 22 and aiming to become an accountant.

She claims some teachers at her secondary school "picked on me from the word go".

"But I retaliated and misbehaved and got in with the wrong people and it went downhill," she said.

"They used to send me home for two weeks when those Ofsted people came into the school, that's how bad it got."

Accountancy

But here, after a failed college course and a string of temporary jobs, things are different.

"Everybody here is in the same position so people don't look down on you," she said.

"The staff treat you like adults. It's helped me because you get one-to-one support from the teachers, which you don't get in school."

Heather is taking maths and English GCSEs in a couple of weeks' time and hopes to get a grade C in each - maybe a B in the English.

It would make her the highest qualified member of her family.

Jean Steward, working on the computer on his design of a CD cover for a friend, is on not so much his second chance but his third.

Jean Steward: Big ambitions

He was first referred to Second Chance as part of the New Deal welfare-to-work programme, as are about a quarter of the students.

"I was pretty rebellious," he said.

"I was confused about education. I hypnotised myself into saying I couldn't do it."

So he left but realised he had to do something with his life for the sake of his two young children, and asked Barbara Brodigan if he could return.

"I could hardly read or write then. I came here and I learned quite a lot about myself. The staff helped me to hone my talents."

One way they did that was by introducing him to computer-based graphic design.

He was also inspired by a trip to another Second Chance school, in Denmark, which is run as a business - a "production school" which operates as a workplace.

"The things they were doing in the school impressed me, so I came back with a few ideas," he said.

"They used techniques on the computers that I had never seen before."

Teamwork

The Leeds school cleared the main table in the centre of its multimedia room to make a group discussion area to work on collaborative projects.

That way all the students - even if they have no long-term design interest - learn to communicate ideas in an articulate way.

One of the sketches for a leaflet about the school's curriculum

"They are learning things without realising it," said the school's multimedia tutor, Anne-Laure Chauvin.

"It can be difficult for students here because they might not have the skills to work like that."

And they are doing it for real - because a problem the school has had is in getting work placements in art and design, ironically because business is booming and firms haven't the time to train people.

So the school has begun doing commercial design work itself.

And Jean Steward is using what he has learned to put something back into the community.

He won a Millennium Award worth �5,000 for his idea for an anti-drugs leaflet.

It has allowed him to buy a top-spec computer on which to put the project into effect, which he will get to keep.

Katie D'Arcy wants to be a beauty technician: "It was pick myself up or let myself go under"

Jean feels he has come a long way in two years. His self-esteem has obviously soared.

"I'm going to go into business for myself," he said.

"I am going to produce some brilliant artwork."

Problem kids

Of course many schools would say they could motivate disaffected youngsters just as well if they had the same sort of staff-to-student ratio.

Then again, many would cheerfully let Second Chance do the job for them.

"I have had parents in here who can't get their children into any school," Barbara Brodigan said.

"The raising standards league tables have created for some people social exclusion, because the schools don't want them.

"If I said I would take students below school leaving age I would be absolutely inundated by local schools with their problem kids."

Funding

The original Second Chance idea in 1998 was that after two years of start-up money from Europe, local and national governments would pick up the bill.

In the UK that has not happened.

The school was opened with a fanfare by the then education secretary, David Blunkett. From time to time ministers come and say nice things - but they don't promise any money.

Barbara Brodigan said the school was itself given a second chance and continued past its original two years thanks to European Social Fund money.

That runs out in December. She is filling in a new application form.