Ruth Kelly

The education secretary has threatened to use legislation to force all schools to accept their share of unruly pupils.

Addressing the Commons education and skills select committee on Wednesday, Ruth Kelly said she is prepared to push a bill through parliament as a last resort means of dealing with heads who refuse to follow her orders.

Government guidelines commit to all schools to accept their "fair share" of disruptive students.

But evidence suggests many headteachers are failing to comply in the absence of tougher penalties, even though ministers have promised all classrooms will be funded and equipped to do so by September 2007 at the latest.

Kelly told the cross-party group of MPs that she wants schools to act as "good citizens" voluntarily, and avoid forcing some institutions to take an excess of expelled pupils.

If this fails to materialise she said "there is still the possibility of legislating. I want schools to do this."

She also refused to dismiss committee chairman Barry Sheerman's suggestion that her department should have an "iron fist inside a velvet glove".

'Horror'

But shadow education secretary Tim Collins attacked the approach.

"Parents and teachers will be horrified that the secretary of state still subscribes to her predecessor's absurd and outdated view that good schools can improve by being forced to take badly behaved children expelled elsewhere," he said.

"It's a licence to put a bully in every classroom and a thug on every playground.

"Only the new Conservative government will allow head teachers the absolute right over admissions and exclusions by scrapping independent appeals panels and giving children with behavioural problems the chance to make a fresh start at a 'turnaround' school where they can get the specialist help they so obviously require."

Kelly also told the committee that her priorities in the post she was given in December last year are: "Standards of teaching, standards of behaviour, and standards of discipline."

"But I would also like to get parents more involved in education," she added, pointing to evidence that this improved performance.

But she denied that having three education secretaries since David Blunkett left at the 2001 election had had a disruptive influence on her new department.

"You should not underestimate the degree of continuity of purpose there has been," she told Sheerman.

"If you had asked the first secretary of state what his priorities were I think he would have said standards."