MICHAEL HOWARD will promise today to establish a network of “turnaround schools” to educate up to 24,000 unruly children. The Conservative leader will announce that persistently disruptive pupils will be housed in separate full-time schools if his party forms the next government.

The plans would see more than twice as many places created than there are pupils currently excluded permanently by head teachers each year. Mr Howard will couple the proposal with a pledge to give heads the final say on whether children should be expelled.

Turnaround schools for primary and secondary children would replace the present system of pupil referral units (PRUs) which, Mr Howard will say in a speech in London, provide only a temporary response to bad behaviour. Only 4,000 places are available in PRUs but 9,500 children are expelled each year.

Mr Howard will criticise education standards at PRUs, saying that fewer than half of pupils in them obtain a single GCSE. Half of expelled children receive fewer than 20 hours of education a week.

Turnaround schools would offer “a new regime for problem pupils” with a focus on behavioural improvement and learning the basics. Pupils would follow an established curriculum and the schools would be required to publish attendance and performance figures.

Mr Howard will say that children ordered to turnaround schools will only be able to return to mainstream education once they have earned a certificate of good behaviour.

He will seek to mark out school discipline as an election issue by contrasting his proposals with Labour’s policy. Charles Clarke, the Education Secretary, told The Times that he will require expelled pupils to be distributed fairly around all schools from next September instead of being allowed to concentrate in “sink” schools.

Mr Howard will accuse Tony Blair of advocating an “outdated 1960s education agenda” that every child must remain in a mainstream school regardless of behaviour. “How can the majority of pupils, who want to learn and get on, do so if they are disrupted by one or two unruly yobs their teachers are powerless to discipline or expel?” Mr Howard will say.

“We will give heads and governors complete control over admissions. They will no longer be forced, as they are to be under Mr Blair’s Government, to admit pupils expelled from other schools. And we will give head teachers complete control over expulsions.”

The Conservatives will abolish independent appeals panels and give heads full powers over expulsions. Parents will be able to make representations to the governing body but the “final decision” will rest with the head.

Heads and governors will also have control over admissions and will not be forced to admit expelled pupils from other schools. They will be able to compel parents to sign “binding home-school contracts” setting out their responsibilities.

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