MICHAEL HOWARD and Tony Blair will push school discipline and parental choice to the heart of their election campaigns today.

The Conservative leader, releasing his party’s election manifesto, will promise to govern for the forgotten majority.

Mr Blair, who will publish the education and economic sections of Labour’s manifesto with Gordon Brown, will pledge that Labour will go on spending a rising share of national income on education, with the savings from falling unemployment switched to schools. The Chancellor said last night that this would be the “education election”.

The Tory manifesto will promise to let parents choose the school best suited to their child’s needs; good schools will be allowed to expand; others will be set up in response to demand. Its proposal to allow parents to send children to any independent school that offers a place at the cost of a state-funded school was already the subject of a row last night.

Mr Brown claimed that the Tory policy amounted to taking £2 billion from state schools and transferring it to private schools. He branded that a “privatisation policy for a few”.

Tim Collins, the Shadow Education Secretary, accused Mr Brown of leading the Labour campaign into the gutter “with these outrageous smears”. “Only last month Ruth Kelly (the Education Secretary) failed to back up her claim that Conservatives would take £1 billion out of education,” he said. “Gordon Brown has simply doubled that figure and reinforced Labour’s ambition to try to win this election dishonestly.”

Mr Blair said in a speech in his constituency that education would be the driving mission of a re-elected government.

“Every penny of further savings from reduction in unemployment will be devoted to it, every part of government will be focused on it,” he said.

Labour would raise spending on education as a proportion of national income, guaranteeing schools three-year budgets, to help to plan development, with year-on-year increases.

The rival manifestos will pledge crackdowns on discipline. Labour’s will promise zero tolerance for minor disruption, stating: “Every pupil has the right to learn without disruption; no teacher should be subject to abuse or disrespect.”

The Conservative manifesto will promise to give heads and governors full control over expulsions. Instead of disrupting the edcuation of the majority, difficult pupils will be given the chance to get their lives back on track in special turnaround schools. Teachers will be given added protection against malicious allegations of abuse and the paperwork burden on them will be reduced.

Charles Kennedy said his party offered practical solutions to the everyday problems faced by an electorate that felt “badly let down by Labour”.

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