Headteacher Nigel Hughes didn’t know whether to be embarrassed or pleased. Having just asked a Year 6 literacy class to explain why it was an advantage using complex sentences, quick as a flash, one boy said: “Because it helps you do well in your SATs.”

It was one of those moments all teachers recognise. It wasn’t the right answer, but it was clever, cheeky and showed an underlying understanding of the importance of learning. Those moments make teaching worthwhile.

At Montgomery Combined, a large first and middle school serving a mixed community near Exeter city centre, such moments seem common enough. A quick tour of its classrooms reveals happy children and some well-directed lessons, led by an experienced, settled staff. Add to this the teaching of French from Year 4 and specialist lessons in ceramics - additions most primary schools would die for - and it’s difficult to see why anyone would want to change the way the school is run.

But change is coming nevertheless. Within four or five years, not one of Exeter’s 30 first, middle or combined schools will be untouched by reorganisation plans which, if realised, will fundamentally alter education provision in the city. Equally radical changes are planned for the city’s five 12-16 high schools and the local tertiary college, which will collaborate in an experiment designed to transform the 14-to-19 curriculum and become a model for the rest of the country.

The approaching upheaval is the result of a major inquiry into the future of Exeter’s education system, prompted partly by concern about standards. A recent Ofsted report on schools in Devon underlined this concern, pointing out that standards in Exeter had fallen consistently below the rest of the county. Standards in both English and mathematics at key stage 3 have fallen since 1998 and the percentage of boys achieving five or more top GCSE grades is well below that achieved elsewhere in the country.

It was against this stark background that Devon County Council set up the Exeter Education Commission last December, under the chairmanship of Ted Wragg, columnist for The TES and professor of education at the city’s university. It is now 30 years since the last major changes swept away Exeter’s old system of grammar schools and secondary moderns, replacing them with 12-to-16 comprehensives. The city set up pioneering middle schools and developed the first tertiary college in the country.

Since then, Exeter College has flourished. It attracts around 3,500 full-time students aged 16 to 19, more than half of whom come from outside the city, proof of its popularity. Of these, around 900 are taking A-levels or (in some cases the international baccalaureate) and 650 are on level 3 general vocational programmes.

“We have always set out to be truly comprehensive and we don’t have exclusive entry qualifications,” says the college’s principal Tim Smith. “Despite that our A-levels have always been around the national average and our GNVQs and national diplomas tend to exceed it. But very significant is that in the last five years our average university point score has risen every year and our top 100 achievers compare with the best in the country.”

For many years, too, Exeter schools did well. In the 1980s the high schools did pioneering work with TVEI - the technical and vocational educational initiative, an early attempt to develop a coherent 14-to-19 curriculum that offered a vocational route to a professional or trade qualification, and possibly higher education.

“Exeter was one of the first to pilot TVEI and did some very good work,” Professor Wragg says. “But it was killed stone dead by the 1988 Education Act. This split the curriculum into two - 11 to 16 and then 16-plus. That held up development of the secondary curriculum across the country.”

The middle schools, meanwhile, became a magnet for ambitious primary teachers and heads, enabling the city to recruit high quality staff, among them Nigel Hughes at Montgomery Combined, who moved there from Plymouth five years ago. But the advantages of middle schools began to be questioned after 1988, because the age of transfer put them out of step with the key stages of the new national curriculum. Exeter pupils were having to manage the critical transition to secondary school in the middle of key stage 3.

The Exeter commission, which published its findings last spring, concluded that the age of secondary transfer should be switched to 11, to match the rest of the country. Local politicians and business leaders were concerned that some families moving to Exeter were opting to have their children educated outside the city, or at local independent schools, to match the schooling they were used to.

Nigel Hughes, like other middle school heads, reluctantly agrees the change is necessary: “I’m torn. But the system as a whole doesn’t work for all of the children in Exeter,” he says.

“I shall be very sad when the Year 7s go. They add a lot of character to the school and I think we do very well by them. But I am embracing the reorganisation. It’s an opportunity to look at education in Exeter and get equality of opportunity for all.”

It is partly the sense that in recent years Exeter has been held back by its school system, coupled with the city’s changing demographic profile, that has encouraged Professor Wragg and his co-commissioners to think beyond a simple reorganisation. The aim of their key recommendations is to provide a dynamic and innovative system, which will not only raise standards, but make Exeter schools a magnet for parents, students and ambitious teachers again.

The start will be to reorganise primary schools, to avoid a school change at the end of key stage 1. But the biggest changes will be at secondary level, where each of the five high schools will, subject to government approval, become non-selective and specialist, with a “centre of excellence”.

It is hoped that by taking on specialisms such as science, the arts and languages, the less popular schools in the city will enjoy parity of esteem with the thriving 1,200-pupil West Exe technology college and the 1,000-pupil St Peter’s high school, the city’s former grammar school, which enjoys the best exam results.

As part of the deal, the county council hopes to rebuild and expand the city’s three smallest high schools with one of them, St Luke’s, moving to a new, larger site near the city centre.

These ambitious plans will not come cheap. The county council has just announced plans to raise up to pound;59 million through the Government’s private finance initiative. The proposals include opening up Exeter’s schools for community use, installing the latest computer technology and providing high quality facilities, suitable for adults as well as children. A staff college will also be established to help teachers and learning support staff with in-service training.

The vision is to turn Exeter into a learning city for the 21st century. Critics might say that is just hype: that not much will actually change.

But the changes at 14-19 level form a radical initiative that could once again put Exeter at the forefront of education reform. The commission proposed a new 14-to-19 academy, a joint venture between the high schools and Exeter College. This would operate as a “virtual college”, in which staff from the schools and the college would work together. The aim would be to produce coherent programmes, allowing students from 14 onwards to pursue part of their education in the tertiary college, or in one of the other high schools, taking advantage of its specialist facilities and expertise.

The plan is strongly supported by both the college and the secondary heads.“There’s no doubt that young people with an enthusiasm and interest in their vocational education will benefit by starting that at 14. That will help with better motivation and even better student achievement,” says Tim Smith, the college principal.

The high school heads also see the academy as a way of helping teachers. As Terry Hammond, head of St Luke’s, puts it: “This would give my staff the chance to have the experience of AS and A-level teaching, and vocational teaching - a welcome push for staff development.”

But it will not be easy making this vision a reality. Teachers and lecturers will have to agree to new, more flexible conditions of service, funding will have to be sorted out, and a whole infrastructure, ranging from ICT systems to transport, put in place.

“It will be difficult to bring about and the details still need to be sorted out,” says Professor Wragg .“But for the first time in our history, there is a genuine chance that we will get parity between vocational and academic courses.

“You might start at 14 by doing a vocational course. You could then do a modern apprenticeship, follow it up with a two-year foundation degree and then perhaps go on to do a full degree.

“It has been much more difficult in the past to do that. Schools were not allowed to do vocational work. Now they can do it, but how many schools can run a training restaurant and a motor vehicle centre? How can schools set up a building trades centre? You can’t. That’s why schools and colleges must work together.”

Professor Wragg hopes that Exeter can become a model for the rest of the country, making a practical reality of many of the policies set out in the Government’s recent education White Paper. Ministers are said to be taking a great interest in the city’s plans.

For the first time in a generation, it seems, Exeter is now ready to take the lead again in education reform.

Shaping the Future, Exeter as a Learning City in the 21st Century, is available on the Devon website: www.devon.gov.ukealexetered