THE fashion designer Jasper Conran is to spend £2m sponsoring a state secondary school to specialise in teaching design.

Conran’s plan, which will be unveiled this week, will see a city academy created in northeast London under a government scheme to bring private money into state schools.

Conran, one of Britain’s most successful designers, has been inspired partly by his own miserable schooldays. He is the highest-profile name to contribute to the controversial city academies programme, under which the government plans to open 200 schools by 2010.

His 900-pupil school would teach the national curriculum and offer teaching in subjects that could range from clothing and garden design to cookery.

Conran believes that less academic pupils should be given more chances. “As a society we are not doing enough for children who are failing,” he said. “If you are constantly coming bottom of the class, your confidence is being eroded drip by drip.”

Conran — the son of Sir Terence, founder of Habitat, and the writer Shirley Conran — was sent to boarding school in Dorset at the age of seven. He describes himself as “a fat child, very quiet, very bullied”. His flair for design blossomed at 15 when he decided to “get the hell out” of school and enrolled at the Parsons School of Design in New York.

“I have led a privileged life and find myself in a privileged position,” he said. “It does not mean, however, that I forget how it feels to be an outcast.

“While I want this school to have a good academic curriculum, there are children who will not go all the way to 18. So it seems sensible to equip children with other vocational skills and find out what makes them tick as early as possible.

“I believe specialisms are going to be one of our vital exportable commodities. We are great at creativity, at oddness, at design.”

The Waltham Forest Academy of Design is planned to open in 2007, replacing one of the worst schools in its borough — McEntee school, where numbers have fallen to 450 pupils. Although this year’s results are up, in 2001 just 13% of pupils got five good GCSEs compared with a national average of 53%.

The plans, which have been drawn up by Conran and officials for the past year, will be unveiled to McEntee parents this week. They are intended to foster far better GCSE and A- level results. The cost of the school is estimated at £21m, with £19m coming from the government, which would also pay salaries and running costs.

Conran plans to bring in successful people — such as artists, theatre designers, architects, potters and fashion designers — to inspire the children.

Ministers have given initial approval to the plan and Conran has discussed the school with Tony Blair. Waltham Forest council must also give approval for the scheme to go ahead.

Conran’s idea was partly sparked by visits to the Business Academy in Bexley, southeast London, which opened two years ago. It was sponsored by Sir David Garrard, the property developer, who did not go to school until he was nine.

The academy programme, launched in 2002 by David Blunkett, then education secretary, aims to replace failing schools and lift exam results.

The greatest controversy has been that surrounding academies in northern England sponsored by the Emmanuel Schools Foundation, backed by a charity set up by Sir Peter Vardy, the car dealer. The teaching of biblical creationism alongside scientific evolutionary theories of nature in some of these academies has sparked anger from scientists, politicians and religious figures.

At present there are only 12 academies up and running, although five more planned to open in the next fortnight. In total they will cost £425m. Many more, like Conran’s, are at an early stage of design.

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