A GROWING discipline crisis and thousands of persistently failing schools are undermining efforts to raise education standards, the head of Ofsted gave warning yesterday.

David Bell said that one in ten schools had made no real progress between inspection visits in the past three years.

Of the 10,000 schools visited since 2001, a tenth had made “unsatisfactory, poor or very poor” progress. Applied to England’s total number of state schools, this would produce a figure of 2,500 schools that had made no real progress nationwide.

Mr Bell, the Chief Inspector of Schools in England, cast doubt on the Government’s approach to weak schools and suggested that it was time for more aggressive action.

He also highlighted rising levels of classroom disruption a day after Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary, promised “zero tolerance” of even the mildest forms of misbehaviour by pupils.

There had been a sharp increase in the percentage of schools where discipline was “unsatisfactory or worse”. Levels of good behaviour were at their lowest since Labour came to power.

Behaviour was good in only two thirds of schools compared with three quarters in 1997. Discipline was poor in 9 per cent of schools compared with 5 per cent a year ago.

Mr Bell said that no schools were free from low-level disruption caused by a minority of pupils. He added: “All schools, to a greater or lesser extent, even if they are otherwise orderly or successful, have to deal with a number of pupils who cause disruption.

“You can have relatively small numbers of pupils having quite a substantial and disproportionate effect on the others.”

Presenting his third annual report as Chief Inspector, Mr Bell said that the proportion of schools where behaviour was poor “shows no sign of reducing”. His findings come just months before a general election, expected in May, in which discipline and classroom standards are set to be key issues of controversy between Labour and the Conservatives.

Tim Collins, the Shadow Education Secretary, said: “Conservatives are convinced that schools which perform poorly in their teaching assessment are those with the worst discipline record. It is therefore no surprise that Ruth Kelly has decided to raise this problem just weeks before an election — having ignored it for nearly eight years. We will not make the same mistake.

“On Day 1 one of the new Conservative government, we will bring forward measures to restore head teachers’ authority over pupil behaviour and teaching, so that the people who know and care for our children are put back in charge.”

Mr Bell said that inspections in 2003-04 showed that England’s education system was improving and contained “many of the preconditions for further improvement”.But Ofsted’s report still showed that the number of failing schools jumped by 18 per cent to 332 in 2003-04, the second successive increase.

Mr Bell said that more schools had failed because Ofsted had raised its expectations.

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