Headteachers from grammar schools are to take over the management of failing schools in their area under plans for reform in England.

State grammar schools, which as a group outperformed independent schools in the national A-level results last year, will be expected to form “super trusts” in which they link up with a struggling secondary modern school together with either a business, voluntary organisation or local authority.

They will be expected to pool their expertise and facilities within the super trust to raise the performance of failing schools, where fewer than 30 per cent of pupils achieve five GCSEs at grades A to C, including English and maths.

There are 638 such schools in the country and the Government hopes to team up a significant proportion of them with grammar and other successful types of state school.

The proposals provide the Government with a robust answer to critics of grammar schools, including many on the Labour backbenches who are unhappy about the persistence of grammar schools within the state system. About 40 backbench MPs led by Ian Gibson, Labour MP for Norwich North, recently called for England's remaining 164 grammar schools to be abolished. The Government has repeatedly said that it has no intention of doing any such thing, although it had said it will not create any more.

A government spokesman said yesterday: “The idea of super trusts is to enable formal links between high-performing state schools, including grammar schools, and those doing less well.”

Teaching unions have long argued that it is no accident that a significant proportion of the 638 worst-performing secondary schools are secondary modern schools in grammar school areas.

John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said it stood to reason that secondary moderns often struggled with their GCSE results given that nearby grammar schools were creaming off the brightest pupils. “Many secondary modern schools are on the list of 638. About 90 of them. It's because the odds are stacked against them in the children they are allowed to admit. A fair way to assess the performance of a secondary modern school might be to put its results together with the local grammar school and then compare them with other schools,” he said.

The reforms, to be announced by Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, tomorrow in a document entitled The Extra Mile, will give local authorities 50 days - until the end of the summer term - to produce action plans to improve their worst schools.

During the past ten years the number of schools failing to meet the minimum performance threshold of 30 per cent of pupils gaining five GCSEs at grades A to C, including English and maths has fallen from 1,600 to today's figure of 638. Twenty per cent are in the North West of England.

Gordon Brown said that schools that fail to meet the new threshold by 2011 could be closed or merged. His Schools Secretary is determined to speed up the pace of change. The plans will push for underperforming schools in the areas of greatest need to be turned into academies.

As part of the reforms, Mr Balls will call on school governors in the 638 schools to review what they need to do to get above the targets, which is regarded as an absolute minimum.

Also under the reform package - dubbed the National Challenge - the Government will provide funding for newly qualified teachers to be trained to master's degree level within five years.

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