TOWN Hall education chiefs are tonight considering plans to hand a secondary school in London’s East End over to a university to improve exam results. Only 23 per cent of the pupils at St Paul’s Way Community School got five A*-to-C GCSE grades last year

By Gemma Collins

TOWN Hall education chiefs are tonight considering plans to hand a secondary school in London’s East End over to a university in a bid to improve its exam results.

Only 23 per cent of the pupils at St Paul’s Way Community School in Bow Common managed five A*-to-C GCSE grades last year.

Now the education authority at Tower Hamlets is thinking of turning it into a National Challenge Trust school.

LIFE CHANCES

The move would mean handing it over and its staff and assets to an educational partner’ such as a university.

The authority’s head of Learning Carmel Littleton said: “The aim of national challenge trusts is to raise standards and improve life chances for pupils and the community. This will help to break the cycle of poverty.”

The School would get �750,000 Government cash and be run by a board of trustees which would appoint most of the school governors.

THREAT

But the move comes as a blow to teachers, who have been threatened with redundancies.

They fear staff and parents would have less of a say over the running of the school.

The council is expected to give the go-ahead tonight (Wednesday) for a public consultation in September.

The University of London’s Institute of Education has already offered to be the trust’s lead’ partner, while the University of East London and King’s College have also shown interest.