Balls pledges to set up 100 co-operative schools in parent power battle

Children's Secretary Ed Balls was announcing plans for up to 100 " cooperatives" where communities, charities and parental groups would manage schools.

The scheme is a major expansion of a long-standing Labour commitment to let parents bid to make major decisions on issues from staffing and spending to the curriculum taught.

The Conservatives accused the Government of dragging its feet for years - and countered by promising to give families an even greater say.

A battle for "parent power" in education now looks set to become one of the big themes of the next election, fuelled by public anger at the difficulty of getting places at good schools.

Announcing his plans at the annual conference of the Co-operative Party, Mr Balls said: "I want to see more parents and communities actively involved in schools and the co-operative model is an ideal way to do this.

"This is about putting power in the hands of those who are directly engaged with local schools, and who know best what is needed in their area."

The pilot schemes will offer grants from a £500,000 fund to parental groups who want to set up trusts to launch or take over schools. There is no list yet of schools or areas that may take up the idea.

Schools that become trusts get £10,000 towards the costs of the change, but co-op trusts will get an extra £5,000.

But shadow children's secretary Michael Gove said Labour had failed to deliver parent power after 11 years in charge and the pilot schemes were not guaranteed to create a major expansion.

"In Sweden over the past decade they have opened 900 new state schools providedby parents' trusts - but in Britain there is just one school actually run by a co-operative trust," he said. "Ed Balls is belatedly trying to respond to the demand for reform."

The Conservatives launched plans last year for co-op schools based on the Swedish laws that allow parents to claim a budget based on what their children's education would cost in an existing school.

When the plan was unveiled, Labour derided it, with Schools Minister Jim Knight dubbing it "a wheeze" and saying that trust schools were "nothing new".

Mr Balls is one of 29 Labour MPs who style themselves "Labour and Cooperative" and Michael Stephenson, head of the Co-operative Party, backed him saying: "This will give real power to local people to shape the schools they want and give people real choice in education - the power to choose how their school is run."