A secondary school is to be given almost £200,000 of government cash to come up with innovative ways to raise education standards.

Varndean School in Brighton is the only school in East Sussex and one of 103 schools nationally to head up the new Leading Edge Partnerships.

Announced by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), the scheme involves schools which have agreed to work together raising standards and developing new approaches to teaching.

Varndean headteacher Andy Schofield said: "It means we will be at the forefront of best practice in relation to how students learn and how teaching can be organised to allow that to happen.

"It's very exciting because it means the money and status will buy us the time to be able to think more about what we are doing, which is a luxury most people don't have."

Varndean will be given £60,000 a year for the next three years to help develop new teaching methods.

The school will also look at some of the learning challenges facing teachers, such as underachievement among boys.

Mr Schofield said: "It's about developing teachers, changing the way they think about themselves, getting them to think about practices and working across schools as well as with each other in their own school.

"The key parts for the Government are about how you change the whole system, reform the workforce, get support staff in and change the way teachers operate, making them more professional.

"The DfES decided it needed to have environments grown locally and it could not direct it from the centre.

"They want schools to change the system and identify schools which are ready to invoke change."

National networks are being developed to allow the partnerships to share their new practices with other schools.

Mr Schofield said: "People come into teaching with a passion but after a couple of years it is often snuffed out.

"The reality of school life is it can be relentless and it grinds some people down.

"So to keep people, conditions under which they work have to change."

Schools standards minister David Miliband said the new proposals would replace the current one size-fits-all system with something more tailor- made.

He said: "It will be built around the talents and needs of every child, to ensure every child will get the individual attention they need and deserve.

"Leading Edge Partnerships will cascade new and interesting approaches to teaching and learning through out the system."