A school is set to become the first business and enterprise college in Sussex.

Chichester High School for Boys' successful bid for specialist status was confirmed by Education Secretary Charles Clarke as he outlined plans to transform the secondary education system.

He also announced that Hillcrest College, Hastings, would specialise in languages while Thomas Bennet Community College in Crawley would specialise in sports.

The three schools will be designated from September 1, bringing the total of specialist schools in Sussex to 28.

As well as preparing a detailed bid, Chichester High School for Boys had to raise £50,000 of private sponsorship.

It will now receive a one-off capital grant and additional funding for at least four years.

Headteacher Diane Dockrell said specialising would transform the school's curriculum.

She said: "Becoming a specialist school doesn't mean we will be limiting the curriculum elsewhere.

"We will continue to encourage students into arts and humanities but we can now introduce a different focus into subjects in these areas."

The school would also be working with primary schools to help them develop enterprise programmes.

Mrs Dockrell said: "About 90 per cent of the city's businesses employ fewer than ten people and we're going to be working with them to make sure we're generating entrepreneurial young people with the skills firms need.

"We've identified a particular shortfall in IT and numeracy skills so we're going to target this. One big issue we want to focus on is the number of girls leaving school at 16 without IT accreditation."

Allan Russell, headteacher at Hillcrest School, said: "Hastings has a number of small businesses which aren't always aware of overseas opportunities.

"There's a fair bit of export business going on here but many firms are reluctant to get involved because they feel competency in a relevant language would be essential to success.

"We're going to be working with them to make sure we're producing linguists with the right abilities and to train existing members of staff.

"I think the school has a responsibility to help counter the prejudices that some people have about people from different countries and their cultures. It's a big issue and I'm sure educating people can help."

He said learning another language helped students learn English and his colleagues would be working with primary schools to help them cope with the reintroduction of language teaching.