Smash hit

“Keeping the rigour, identifying and maintaining the funding, ...is absolutely vital,” Mr Blunkett told the BBC.

But John Dunford, chief executive of the Association of School and College Leaders, said Ofsted inspection, tests in English and maths, and exams all mean that schools will continue to focus hard on literacy and numeracy.

“It is of the utmost importance to secondary schools that primary schools continue to teach literacy and numeracy to high standards and that the improvements that have come in the last ten years continue,” he said.

“With adequate funding to buy in support and appropriate accountability measures to incentivise improvement across the ability range, I am confident that this will continue under the new arrangements,” he added.

David Laws, the Liberal Democrat Schools spokesman, said the strategies were ineffective and should have been scrapped long ago. “They undermine teachers by failing to trust their professional judgment and essentially telling them how to do their jobs.”

The White Paper comes after a report from the Commons Schools Committee in April which criticised the “degree of control” exercised by Whitehall over the curriculum. It said lessons were too prescriptive and did not take account of the needs of pupils in different areas.

A spokesman for the Department for Schools said the move would allow support to be tailored to schools’ individual needs.

"We must continue to do the very best to ensure that all children get the reading and writing skills they need to succeed in later life,” he said.

As The Times revealed this week, the White Paper will also include measures to merge weak and strong schools to create “chains” under one superhead.

Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: “Ed Balls’ recognition that teachers’ professional judgement can be trusted to deliver the curriculum is long overdue.

Chris Keates, general secretary of the teaching union NASUWT, said her members had never supported the national strategies.

"What we now need is not a free for all at local level, but the right balance between flexibility and consistency of practice within which teachers have the appropriate level of freedom to exercise their professional judgement."

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