Tradition at heart of school plan

Labour yesterday put school uniforms, discipline and the traditional house system at the heart of a pre-election educational package unashamedly designed to win disillusioned middle-class voters back to the state sector and stem the flight to private schools.

In an ambitious five-year programme which for the first time includes a lengthy list of educational "guarantees" for pupils, parents and students, Charles Clarke promised to expand the number of places in popular and successful schools and grant them unprecedented freedoms.

In an interview with the Guardian yesterday, the education secretary said he wanted to lure middle-class families back into the state sector. Although only 7% of children go to private schools across the country, the figure is 20% or higher in some areas, such as central London. "There is a significant chunk of them who go private because they feel despairing about the quality of education. They are the people we are after," Mr Clarke said.

Among the unleaked elements in the 110-page document - entitled Five Year Strategy for Children and Learners - was the unexpected recommendation that all secondary schools should introduce a uniform, the centrepiece of a package to crack down on bad behaviour and poor attendance also designed to reassure the middle classes.

The document says: "School uniforms help to define the ethos of a school and the standards expected. They help give pupils pride in their school and make them ambassadors for their school in the community."

A return to the school house system, an aspect of private schooling which was widely used in the state sector a generation ago, is also mooted, to help children adjust to the transition from primary to much larger secondary schools.

But the education secretary found himself under fire when he unveiled the package to MPs after months of negotiation around the cabinet table. The Conservatives accused him of "Xeroxing" their own proposals - a charge echoed by the Liberal Democrats - while Labour MPs greeted emerging details with wary scepticism.

The package covers education from "cradle to grave". It will be backed by rising investment in education - up £11bn a year to £58bn by 2008 - as part of Labour's drive to "invest and reform" in a revolution in health and education to give voters real choice.

Controversially, Mr Clarke's new freedoms cover England's 164 surviving grammar schools which still have selective policies, although he stressed that ministers have rejected expanding selection in any other way. He also ruled out subsidising private education.

Much of yesterday's statement was already well-known. Plans for an accelerated expansion of the so-called academy programme - semi-independent schools which are funded through taxpayers' cash as well as from private sponsorship - had been leaked. Their numbers are intended to rise from 12 to 200, out of a total of 4,000 secondary schools.

Also well-trailed were plans to give all schools ring-fenced, three-year budgets to allow them to plan ahead. That change has enraged local authorities who saw themselves as losing yet more autonomy to Whitehall despite promises by all the main parties to devolve power.

The government also revealed fresh thinking on protection for teachers accused of abusing their pupils. The document said teachers should be "defended" from such claims and "not subjected to damaging delays where their integrity is in question".

It called for swift action against pupils who make false allegations. Mr Clarke told the Guardian he was determined to make sure teachers were "in a strong position" against such charges.

Under the proposals, all comprehensives are being encouraged to become specialist secondaries, and existing ones will be able to apply for extra money to develop a second specialism, such as maths, sport, the arts or languages.

In the Commons, Mr Clarke called the plans the most important changes since the 1944 Butler Education Act which set up the tripartite system of grammar, secondary modern and technical schools, which merged to become a comprehensive system in the 60s and 70s.

But he was mocked by the Tory education spokesman, Tim Collins, who said: "Much of today's announcement is a tribute to the power of the photocopier - the product, not so much of Blair or Clarke, but of Xerox." Phil Willis, the Liberal Democrat spokesman, denounced '"a Tory policy being developed by a Labour government".