It also drafted in the brightest school-leavers, permitted by universities to pursue their studies during the holidays while they stood in for teachers during the term.
The region churns out large numbers of teachers recruited from less-bright school leavers.
We're keen to attract a diverse range of people, including bright school leavers who are capable of going to university but have chosen not to.
Bright schools of hand-crafted fish dangle from the ceiling while two violinists often stroll among the tables.
New Computer science GCSEs would spring from the brighter schools, and be networked to spread to the less endowed.
For Emmanuel is one of hundreds of bright school-leavers who each year discover that they are blocked from going to university because they are not technically British.
And, while it is hoped that bright school-leavers might be attracted by a degree-level career option, student poverty could dissuade them.
Inheriting a dilapidated country lacking pride in everything public, he burnished Britain's public face with brighter schools, hospitals, parks and streets.
Feeling betrayed by their universities and their lecturers, some final-year students may now be wondering whether they should have applied instead to be apprentices of Sir Alan Sugar, an entrepreneur who thinks degrees stunt creativity and prefers to employ bright school-leavers.
A great city today might have a magnificent core of grand central streets, stirring architecture, a comprehensive public transport system running like clockwork, secret sewers going about their sulphurous business untiringly, sane governance, bright schools, comforting hospitals, and all of these underpinned by healthy commerce and adorned by a confident culture.
Among others receiving knighthoods were Peter Ogden, founder of the Ogden Trust, which provides scholarships for the brightest state school pupils to go to independent schools; and Richard Staite, headteacher at Beeslack Community high school, Penicuik, Midlothian.
