A NATIONAL talent search is being planned to track the brightest 150,000 children through school and into top universities.

Thirty thousand children will be invited each year to join the Government’s National Academy of Gifted and Talented Youth, using results from primary school tests taken by 11-year-olds.

The initiative comes as teachers were accused of being ideologically opposed to singling out gifted children for special help after it emerged that 40 per cent of secondary schools had never recommended any child to attend the academy.

The talent search is certain to anger Labour MPs, who are already threatening to rebel against Tony Blair’s education White Paper over what they see as plans to introduce back-door selection to secondary schools. Members of the Russell Group of leading universities would be given the names of pupils who were members of the academy so that they could recruit them to degree courses.

Advocates say that this would end the imbalance at Oxford, Cambridge and other elite universities between students from state and fee-paying schools. Critics will see it as a renewed attempt at social engineering by giving state students a head start in the race for university places.

The initiative comes after The Times published research by Professor David Jesson, of the University of York, who found that the brightest 5 per cent students were only half as likely to achieve three A grades at A level in state schools as in the fee-paying sector.

Under the new scheme, promising children in state schools would be tracked from the age of 11 and those who fulfil their academic promise in GCSE examinations at 16 would be approached by admissions officers from Russell Group universities in their first year of sixth form.

Officials at the academy, which is based at the University of Warwick, are in discussions about the scheme with the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (SSAT) and the Department for Education and Skills. They expect to recruit the first children under the scheme in September.

Until now, the academy has relied on teachers at individual secondary schools to recommend candidates for its “gifted and talented” programme from the most able 5 per cent of pupils. But official figures released to Nick Gibb, the Shadow Education Minister, last month showed huge variations in the willingness of schools to identify bright children. Teachers in 40 per cent of schools have failed to nominate a single pupil since the academy opened in 2002.

Sir Cyril Taylor, the chairman of the SSAT, said that the brightest 11-year-olds would be identified from their scores in national curriculum tests of English and mathematics.

Secondary schools would also use non-verbal reasoning tests to confirm the abilities of pupils and to identify any whose potential had not been spotted from the national curriculum exams. Staff at the academy would then contact the children and their parents to invite them to enrol. “There is a commitment in the White Paper for a national talent search using the scores in English and maths and we are going to do it,” Sir Cyril said.

“The people at Warwick have agreed that, instead of relying on teacher recommendations, they will get 30,000 names of 11-year-olds each year.”

This would build over five years to a national register of the country’s most gifted 150,000 children aged 11 to 16, whose talents would be nurtured through regular summer schools, short courses and other activities.

Sir Cyril said that children who fulfilled their potential by passing at least seven GCSEs with A* and A grades at age 16 could be identified to Russell Group universities. Admissions tutors could then approach the teenagers to encourage them to apply for places, pointing out to those from poorer families that bursaries and other financial aid was available. “The Russell Group are saying, ‘give us the names’,” he said. “

We can’t think of a more effective way of getting very able children from comprehensive schools into the better universities.”

Mr Gibb said that there was an “ideological opposition” among teachers in many schools towards singling out gifted children for help.

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