Tories promise to create 30 new schools in capital

Plans for up to 30 new schools in London will be unveiled by the Tories this week.

They will pledge to create up to 20,000 new places at topquality secondary schools, free to parents and pupils but run independently of the state.

The schools blueprint will be the flagship proposal when education spokesman Tim Collins unveils the Conservatives' plans to reform schooling if they win power.

He will also promise stricter school discipline, including new measures to remove unruly pupils from lessons.

Labour is also unveiling its own five-year plan for education this week, with remarkably similar ideas for an expansion of city academies, to include new schools run by the private sector but within the state system.

Under the Tory version, the new schools could be set up by companies, existing private schools, parents' groups or churches. They would receive "generous" government grants and be helped by new planning rules to build on sites earmarked for other developments.

The schools would be free to set their own selection policies, ranging from fully comprehensive to a grammar school-style 11-plus - marking a major difference to Labour, which opposes selection by exam.

Mr Collins today said funding would come from an increase in education spending from a planned £47 billion next year to £62 billion in 2009.

"We want to make sure that the days when London parents have to settle for second or third best for their children are brought to a rapid close," he said. "In the whole of Europe, Britain has the biggest gap between the best and worst schools and between the highest and lowest achieving pupils. In London that gap is worse than anywhere else in the UK."

Official figures show truancy rates and social pressures are worse in the capital than in the rest of the country. London parents are twice as likely to send their children to private-schools. And only six in 10 families in London manage to get their first choice of school, compared with 85 per cent on average nationally.

Under the Tory plan, which mirrors a similar scheme in Sweden, schools would have to pass an Ofsted inspection, meet basic standards and teach the national curriculum.