Schools judged to be either “coasting” on their good results, or doing too little to reverse poor performance, will face the threat of direct intervention from central government.

Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, outlined new powers yesterday to enable his department to force local authorities to issue both successful and failing schools with a formal warning notice, giving them 15 days to make improvements or be taken over.

The new powers of intervention in schools run counter to the Government's expressed aim of devolving more powers to head teachers through the creation of semi-independent academies and trust schools.

In a separate move, Mr Balls said that schools would be made to collect and publish records of children's lifestyles, through a new set of “wellbeing indicators”, likely to include healthy eating, participation in sport and attendance.

He suggested that it would be helpful for schools to know teenage pregnancy rates among pupils, but an official later said it was unlikely that schools would have to record behaviour over which they had limited control, such as drug use, obesity, teenage conception and mental ill-health.

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