LEADING schools, including selective grammars, will have to accept disruptive pupils under government plans to confront classroom indiscipline, Charles Clarke told The Times last night.

The Education Secretary will tell head teachers today that they must all accept a fair share of expelled pupils rather than allow disruptive youngsters to be concentrated in “sink schools” shunned by parents.

Schools that are popular and oversubscribed will no longer be able to excuse themselves by claiming that they lack spare places. Grammar schools will have to accept difficult pupils, even if they do not meet the academic standards required for entry.

Mr Clarke told The Times that he wants to end the practice of shunting the most unruly pupils into the least popular schools, condemning them to a spiral of decline as teachers struggle against the odds to maintain order.

The move is likely to upset many parents, who will fear the impact on their children’s education if well-ordered schools are required to admit problem pupils.

However, Mr Clarke believes that schools will find it easier to manage “hard-to-educate” children in their local areas if they co-operate with each other.

“There is a lot of controversy among groups of schools about whether certain schools end up taking more than their fair share of hard-to-educate kids,” Mr Clarke said.“Sometimes particular schools end up taking more than their fair share.”

The Education Secretary will tell a conference in London today of 500 new heads that the key challenge facing schools is to maintain order by dealing firmly with persistently disruptive pupils.

He will announce that groups of schools will be expected to agree local protocols by September next year for sharing out expelled pupils. The agreements will be thrashed out at forums of heads, governors and officials from the local education authority. The Government will also change its code of practice on admissions to include an expectation that schools must share the burden of coping with expelled children.

Mr Clarke said it would be “an essential feature” of the protocols that no school would be required to admit an unreasonable percentage of expelled pupils.

He indicated that three or four pupils a year would be considered a reasonable number. He accepted that expulsion was an “essential tool in a head teacher’s armoury” against the worst offenders. But schools must take responsibility for ensuring such children were educated appropriately.

“All schools — including popular schools — should share a collective responsibility for ensuring that vulnerable, hard-to- place children, or children in public care that have been permanently excluded, are admitted to a suitable school as quickly as possible.”

He wanted schools to reach voluntary agreements, but indicated he was willing to compel them to accept unruly pupils if the reform were not adopted swiftly enough.

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