Excellence in Cities

The Excellence in Cities (EiC) programme was launched by the UK's Labour Government in March 1999 to raise standards and promote inclusion in inner cities and other urban areas.

Initially targeted at secondary schools, the programme was later expanded to include primary schools, working alongside the Primary National Strategy.

The Excellence Cluster concept was introduced to identify small groups of schools in pockets of deprivation, in both urban and rural areas that would benefit from EiC initiatives.

[1] Research into the Excellence in Cities (EiC) initiative also found that while it had boosted results in Mathematics, it did not improve performance in English and Science of children aged 11 to 14 in Key Stage 3.

The programme started off covering just 25 local education authorities in September 1999, but gradually expanded that to include many more over the following years.