The news that Jules Cartwright has been killed while guiding a climb on Piz Badile, in Switzerland, therefore came as a shock; and the more so that the victim should have been Cartwright, probably the steadiest and most natural mountaineer of the new wave.Cartwright’s first ascent, with Rich Cross, of the north-west ridge of Ama Dablam, Nepal, in 2001 was one of the most celebrated climbs of recent years and he was twice nominated for France’s prestigious Piolet d’Or Award. In a game that has traditionally had a frightening attrition rate, they had suffered only minor broken bones. In smaller towns, it made sense to allow a school to take on a second specialism once it had proved it could excel in its first choice.. Julian Charles Serby Cart-wright, mountaineer: born 13 December 1974; died Piz Badile, Switzerland 30 June 2004. The small coterie of perhaps a half-dozen young alpinists who represent the cutting edge of British mountaineering had for some time counted themselves lucky. “The criticism implies a couple of hundred of the 3,000 to 4,000 secondary schools.”Local education authority leaders are worried, however, that the move will lead to the setting up of a national funding body, taking all secondary schools out of their control.Mr Clarke also revealed that the five-year plan would pave the way for secondary schools to specialise in two different subjects, say arts and science.Specialist schools worked well in large urban conurbations where a group of schools could specialise in different areas and share their expertise, he said. Top-performing ones will be free to reach pay deals with teachers and be given “foundation” status.

It will allow them to sever ties with local education authorities by removing councillors from their governing bodies.The number to be given this freedom is expected to mushroom as the number of specialist schools expands.Mr Clarke was countering criticism from the Conservatives that Labour was limiting freedom from council control to its planned 200 academies – privately sponsored schools allowed to run their own affairs with state financial backing.”Freedom to the front line [headteachers] is a very, very important element of the whole process of our five-year plan,” he said. “That will sweep up the failing schools so that – in the end – there will be no ‘bog-standard’ comprehensives left.”It will take five years after that to turn those schools round – but after that there should be no underperforming schools.”The shake-up will mean all secondary schools in England will receive some form of private sponsorship – be it from business, churches, charities or, ministers hope, parents banding together to back a bid for specialist status.Sir Cyril’s trust holds back sponsorship money centrally to help schools in deprived areas which would find it difficult to get private aid.The blueprint will also result in secondary schools receiving more freedom to run their affairs, Charles Clarke, the Education Secretary, said. They set up in struggling inner-city areas to replace failing schools.The blueprint follows yesterday’s announcement of a further 268 specialist schools in September, bringing the total number to 1,952 – well over half the secondary schools in the country.Sir Cyril said he expected the number to rise to 2,900 within two years. “That will leave around 200 schools which will be swept up by the city academy programme,” he said. He said he was “very proud” to be made chief executive of a “vibrant and vital cultural institution”.. Every state secondary school will be either specialist or a privately sponsored city academy by the end of the decade, a senior government adviser disclosed yesterday.

Schools need to raise £50,000 of private money before they can be granted specialist status.The academies, whose number is expected to swell to 200 as a result of the blueprint, are run by private sponsors. Andy’s departure from Unilever was regretted but amicable, because he showed a real passion for entering the world of television.”Mr Duncan also writes a regular column in Television magazine, in which he talks of the latest BBC campaigns, his love for The Smiths and playing “five-a-side footie with the lads from my local church”.He is a committed Christian, but he has no qualms about taking a role once derided as Channel 4 “pornographer-in-chief”. He’s good with people, he leads teams well and he has a very open and informal style. He questioned how Mr Duncan might react when faced with a row over a controversial programme. One source at the channel said the appointment would “raise eyebrows” in the programme-making community, given the broadcasting backgrounds of the previous four chief executives, Jeremy Isaacs, Michael Grade, Michael Jackson and Mark Thompson.Peter Bazalgette, chairman of Endemol UK, who recently stepped down from the C4 board, said he was not surprised at Mr Duncan’s appointment, and he was “a very shrewd and safe pair of hands” to take the channel beyond the switch-off of analogue television.Niall Fitzgerald, the chairman of Unilever, said: “Andy is highly creative but also driven to get results. “Having a brand specialist like Andy at the helm will offer us a competitive advantage in such a noisy and over-crowded marketplace,” he said.But one former C4 executive said Mr Duncan was making “a very big leap” and that “no one will know him at Channel 4″. He took what he learnt at Unilever and applied it to the BBC brilliantly.”The appointment of a marketing executive to the top job at Channel 4 was seen as being much the choice of the station’s new chairman, Luke Johnson, the former head of PizzaExpress, whose own arrival at the channel at the start of this year also caused surprise.Mr Johnson said Mr Duncan was the “brightest media executive of the Channel 4 generation” and had acquired an unrivalled knowledge of digital media that would help the station retain its identity in a changing television landscape.