Pupils to be paid for Saturday classes
By Liz Lightfoot, Education Correspondent

TEENAGERS will get £3.50 an hour to attend school on Saturday mornings from a local authority desperate to improve its exam results. The payment, designed to compensate pupils for the loss of Saturday job earnings, is 50p above the hourly minimum for recognised training schemes. It also exceeds the £3.20 minimum wage for 18 to 21-year-olds. 

The scheme has been devised by Islington council in north London and City and Islington, a further education college, which are asking a charity to fund a £20,000 pilot project. It is aimed at those likely to fall short of A, B and C grade GCSE passes by which schools and local authorities are judged in Government performance tables. There will be 30 places for pupils predicted to get D grades. The borough has some of the worst exam results in the country, and last week the Government approved a takeover of its education services by a private company. 

Chris Jude, Islington's director of life-long learning who devised the "Upward Bound" project, said: "Many of our pupils are from low-income families and by joining the scheme they would be losing earnings from Saturday jobs. This is a way of compensating them, but the payment is only part of it, because money in itself will do nothing. We are selling the belief that they can succeed." Dr Jude herself left school at 13 after leading a homework strike. She returned to education as an adult and gained a PhD.

 John Dunford, general secretary of the Secondary Heads Association, said the initiative acknowledged the number of working pupils. He said: "A large part of the economy now seems to depend on pupil labour, with little regard for the effect on pupils' school work."