Hoop earrings were banned - too dangerous, too flamboyant - when King Richard school abolished uniform for Years 10 and 11. The students were furious. If the school’s new policy of treating key stage 4 pupils as responsible individuals was genuine, why couldn’t it trust them to remove their saucer-sized earrings in the gym and the lab?

Headteacher Brian McClarin saw their point, and agreed. Attendance among the key stage 4 group went up by 4 per cent the following week. Improving the school’s overall 87 per cent attendance was not part of the plan when, in September 2000, King Richard turned key stage 4 into a self-contained “college”. Nor was improving behaviour, although that followed, too.

The reason the school started offering its 14 to 16-year-olds privileges such as wearing their own clothes and carrying mobile phones, as well as making more profound changes to teaching style and the curriculum, was to tempt them into further education. Everything else has been a bonus.

Portsmouth’s Paulsgrove estate, scene of anti-paedophile riots last year, is not an optimistic place. Its children join King Richard with extremely low levels of literacy and numeracy: 37 of last year’s 200 Year 7s failed to reach level 3. Its families are ill at ease with education; few have successful pre-16 experiences, let alone post-16. During an inspection in January which removed the school from the “serious weaknesses” category, Ofsted’s parental satisfaction questionnaire was sent to 726 homes - and generated just 26 replies.

When Mr McClarin was promoted from deputy to head in late 1999, he knew that he had to persuade more than 40 per cent of his key stage 4 group to stay in education if Paulsgrove’s social cycle was to be broken. So he spent a day in one of the four local tertiary colleges, asking students for advice.

“I came away from Fareham, which is a good college, crystal clear about what the problem was,” he remembers. “Schools in areas such as ours tend to provide more and more for students. That’s fair enough, but it reduces the students’ ability to be independent learners.

“We had been throwing our best staff into KS4, doing lots of work at the GCSE grade DC borderline, and at the end of it students still felt insecure. They lacked confidence in their own ability, and they didn’t feel ready or confident enough to go to college.”

Walk into morning registration for a Year 10 tutor group at King Richard today and it is easy to believe you are in a college, rather than a school. A group of gold-ringed and Adidas-clad boys are clustered around one table; girls in rugby shirts, jeans and jewellery swap early-morning chat around another. Their tutor and head of art, Annabelle Meryweather, checks them on the electronic register, while snippets of her conversation with one girl rise above the pop music on FM radio: “You’ve got over a year until the first exam. You’re doing really well at the moment, you know.”

This is King Richard College at King Richard School - the title the school came up with so it could create a discreet unit at key stage 4 without having to go through legal changes of status or name. In fact, “King Richard College” is a virtual college. It has no separate buildings or even dedicated rooms and it shares its staff with key stage 3, although the head of key stage 4, Peter Newton, bears the title “college director”. Its students are still at school. They are just being seduced by an intelligent mirage.

And they believe in it. “It makes a lot of difference not being in uniform,” says Sam Smith, 14. “In the college they treat us differently because we work harder and the teachers are more interested in us because we aren’t the same as everyone else.”

Students are not automatically admitted to the college: some enter on probation and in uniform; others have been returned to uniform - provided by the school - during Year 10 for up to half a term until their behaviour, work and attendance improves. But it is the deeper changes in teaching and learning that are probably making the more profound difference to their commitment.

King Richard began introducing GNVQs at key stage 4 two years ago, with the help of local further education lecturers who came to the school for joint teaching and project moderation until its teachers were confident enough to go it alone. But the big changeover came this year, when the school decided that nearly all students would take GNVQ science instead of GCSE.

In addition, the school decided to offer GNVQs in art and design, IT, business and performing arts. (Ofsted was delighted with the standard of dance; for the past four years, Year 10 and in some cases Year 9 students have taken GCSE dance and drama early and gone on to do AS-level, too.) As a result, many students now take two full GNVQs, as well as maths, English and two or three other GCSEs. And, in the upside-down world of King Richard College, guess which qualification is seen as the easy option? “GCSE science is for the ones who don’t bother to turn up and don’t do the work,” says Becci Pinhorne, 14. “They find it easier than GNVQ.”

The school organises visits to local businesses and brings in guest speakers to make the curriculum relevant. “We had a woman in from the water board showing how to test samples,” says head of science Bob Francis. “She was going round the classroom saying ‘I do 150 of these a day and this is how I find it works best’. We’re definitely not dumbing down the science, but they can see a purpose to it.”

The students also gain stability and security. Many now spend up to 14 periods a week with their GNVQ tutors, who - in Year 10 - are also their form tutors. Suddenly, says Mr Newton, rather than engaging in petty squabbles with staff over uniform, they are developing trusting relationships with them.

To draw families into this new atmosphere, the school recently replaced old-style parents’ evenings with tutor evenings, so parent and child discuss a report at length with one tutor who knows the child well, rather than dashing between a dozen subject staff. From this September, parents will also be invited to study for GNVQs alongside their children.

The risk in all these special privileges is that those excluded will be disenchanted. There have been murmurings in Years 8 and 9, says Brian McClarin, as well as predictable attempts to get the earrings in early. But therein lies the motivation, he says. “Year 9s, at this time of year, become nervous because they know they won’t automatically be allowed into the college. There’s a small amount of additional fuss, but nowhere near as much as we were predicting.”

Set against that is the remarkable improvement in the key stage 4 group. Attendance is up every day, but particularly on Wednesdays, when most GNVQ lessons take place and students know they risk falling behind with portfolios if they miss them.

Last summer, 69 per cent of King Richard students went on to FE, and the proportion of A to C grades at GCSE and GNVQ is expected to rise from 25 to 35 per cent this year. In “tough” schools, says Mr McClarin, it is easy to become obsessed with behaviour or results. He knows. He has been at King Richard for 20 years. (My taxi driver, a former pupil, was disdainful of her education, but remembered her English teacher, Mr McClarin, with affection.) Mr McClarin is attempting something unique at King Richard - to create a cohesive community in which education and responsibility are things to be proud of. Sometimes that involves being pragmatic. King Richard, for example, has never succeeded in establishing a prefect system. Volunteering to take the side of authority is seen as toadying in the Paulsgrove mindset. So now “college” students who sign a contract to mentor younger students, escort visitors or help in other ways are “rewarded” with pound;12 a week.

And it works - though not for everyone. For those who struggle with responsibility, Peter Newton would like to see his “college” provide more differentiation and targeted support. “I’d like a staggered start in the morning. I’d like a range of specialist study skills tutors, even more personalised attention. And I’d like a quiet, segregated area of the school. Sometimes it’s too much to expect them to coexist so closely with Years 7 and 8 and to hold back their emotions,” he says.

Mr McClarin is aiming higher. “If I’m doing my job, you’ll come back in a few years and see Years 10 and 11 in Years 7 and 8 classrooms supporting literacy and numeracy, supporting younger students with their behaviour,” he says. “Peter would be all for declaring autonomy tomorrow. I have to say to him, ‘This is a school, Peter’.”