THE academy for Britain’s brightest teenagers will be run by Warwick University, The TES can reveal.

It beat at least least six universities or university consortia to the pound;60 million Government contract to set up the institution, which is due to open in the summer.

Bids by Oxford and Oxford Brookes and a group of seven institutions led by Exeter were shortlisted.

The news comes as inspectors report that many bright pupils are missing out on the gifted and talented programme in schools because of haphazard methods of identifying them.

Government plans for the new academy are modelled on an American summer school run by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Warwick’s vice-chancellor Professor David Vandelinde spent 12 years there. The US programme charges more than pound;1,500 for a three-week summer school, with scholarships available. The British academy is to be self-funding within three years and has the power to charge fees.

A spokesman for Warwick University had no information other than that the Government would be making an announcement in January. One of the main challenges for the academy will be identifying the 600 11 to 16-year-olds it will cater for in its first year.

An Office for Standards in Education report published today on provision for the gifted and talented revealed that “rudimentary” procedures were used to spot potential high-flyers. Schools failed to be systematic and inclusive, especially with students who did not fit the traditional academic mould.

The Government is currently spending pound;60m on identifying the top 10 per cent of pupils. More than 400 primary schools and 1,000 secondaries run master classes, summer schools and independent and maintained school partnerships.

Schools commonly identify the very able through cognitive ability or national curriculum test results.

Pupils with clear evidence of performance are easily selected, but those who are very able but with poor behaviour, in public care or in the process of mastering English as a second language, often slip through the net.

Inspectors claim it is still too early to say whether the gifted and talented strand of the Excellence in Cities programme which began in September 1999 will have a long-term impact on academic achievement.

But GCSE results in 2000 revealed pupils in Excellence in Cities areas were improving faster than in the rest of the country.

Inspectors criticised schools which were reluctant to tell parents about the programme for fear it would be seen as divisive.

Pupils who were labelled as gifted and talented were generally positive about it and were proud of being “special”. But the report found that pupils who were not identified felt it unfair that they were excluded from activities.

School standards minister Stephen Timms said: “Today’s OFSTED report recognises the progress we have made with the gifted and talented strand of Excellence in Cities. It also rightly identifies several areas where further action is needed if we are to achieve the objectives set for the strand.”

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT

Areas highlighted for improvement in the gifted and talented programme include:

* better methods for identifying gifted and talented pupils;

* more involvement of parents and pupils as some schools are still very reluctant to inform; parents about the initiative * the development of subject-specific approaches;

* more additional provision such as summer schools and masterclasses;

* recognition of the implications for staffing;

* better monitoring;

* greater integration of activities into the mainstream curriculum in order to have a long-term effect