All failing schools would be identified for takeovers by new heads within 100 days of a Tory election victory, Michael Gove promised yesterday. Britain’s worst schools would be reopened as academies within 18 months of the general election, the Shadow Schools Secretary said.

Mr Gove also promised to allow all schools to bid to become academies, with the freedom to set their own curriculums and hire and fire teachers. The best schools would be automatically approved for the change, he said.

“We will, in our first 100 days, identify the very worst schools, the sink schools which have desperately failed our children, and put them rapidly into the hands of heads with a proven track record of success,” he told the Tory party conference.

Academy schools, introduced under Tony Blair, are taken out of local authority control and given greater freedom to manage their own affairs. But Mr Gove accused Gordon Brown of backsliding on their potential.

“We know that the fastest-improving state schools in our country are academies. Because they’re outside local bureaucratic control they have the freedom to pay good teachers more, to tailor teaching to every child and to ignore government red tape,” he said.

“So a Conservative government would allow any school that is ready the chance to become a new academy.”

The plans were attacked by Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, who said they would “undermine the capacity of schools to work together to raise standards”.

Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said the plans were too simplistic. “They seem to believe that you can abolish failure by waving a magic wand and renaming a school an academy and putting a new head in place.

“They ignore the inconvenient truth that some of the academies are failing schools. Their plans would put an impossible burden on school heads,” she said.

In a speech that mixed Blairite ideas with traditional Tory rhetoric on school uniforms, exam standards and military discipline, Mr Gove condemned the curriculum authority for teaching the Second World War without Winston Churchill.

“Never in the field of public expenditure has so much been spent by so many to distort World War Two,” he said, to laughter in the hall.

Schools would need government approval for a change in status, but Mr Gove said that those rated “outstanding” by Ofsted would win the automatic right to become an Academy.

These schools would also be freed from automatic Ofsted inspection under proposals to streamline the inspection process. Inspectors would only return if there were signs of deterioration.

Ofsted should instead focus on failing schools, Mr Gove said. Any school in “special measures” for poor performance for more than a year — at present 100 — would be given new leaders and reopened as academies by September 2011.

Vernon Coaker, the Schools Minister, said that Mr Gove’s plans to focus on the worst schools risked neglecting hundreds of other schools performing inadequately.

“He talked about raising standards in under-performing schools but parents will be disappointed that the plan he announced today would be less ambitious than our successful National Challenge programme.

Mr Gove reiterated plans to get soldiers to instil discipline in the classroom with a programme to retrain ex-servicemen and woman and teachers, modelled on a US initiative.

“We’ll develop a Troops for Teachers programme — to get professionals in the Army who know how to train young men and women into the classroom where they can provide not just discipline, but inspiration and leadership,” he said.

New powers to clamp down on poor behaviour were also promised. “Unless you have good discipline then teachers cannot teach and children cannot learn. And we know that behaviour in many of our schools at the moment just isn’t good enough,” Mr Gove said.

“We’ll give teachers effective power to confiscate banned items and restrain violent pupils. We will compel the parents of troublemakers to take responsibility for their children. And we will change the law so that when a head teacher expels a violent pupil, that pupil cannot plead that his human rights have been violated and then stick two fingers up to authority.”

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