Now 'nanny' Balls is trying to turn our teachers into parents

Schools are to be judged on how they improve children's 'wellbeing' by tackling obesity, drug abuse and teenage pregnancy.

Teachers will be expected to monitor and record up to 31 detailed aspects of their pupils' lives at home and at school.

Headteachers criticised the new guidance, saying that schools cannot be held responsible for the 'ills of all society'.

And education experts accused the Government of meddling in the work of schools and expecting teachers to do the work of parents and social workers.

The controversial plans come as Children's Secretary Ed Balls launches a clampdown on hundreds of 'coasting' schools that are not doing enough to raise standards.

He is introducing new legal powers that will force complacent local authorities to take action, even against schools that have good exam results but are not displaying sufficient progress year-on-year.

In addition, the Government is planning to introduce 'strong school level indicators' that will measure how much the country's primaries and secondaries are contributing to pupils' well-being.

Schools and local authorities could be made to gather data about 'on site health services' such as contraception clinics which hand out condoms and morning after pills.

Schools will also be expected to monitor healthy eating, look out for 'signs of abuse or neglect' and record whether pupils walk or cycle to school. 

The Department for Children, Schools and Families issued draft guidance yesterday but a definitive list of well-being assessment indicators will be published for consultation later this year.

The document says: 'Whereas schools have access to a rich set of hard data on pupil attainment and progress to inform their evaluation . . . there is a dearth of data available about other aspects of pupil wellbeing.

'The proposal aims to fill that gap in order to improve the quality of schools' evaluation of their contribution to well-being.'

The report says that this 'robust information' will be used by Ofsted in inspections from 2009 onwards. It will also allow comparisons between schools.

Headteachers said yesterday that they were worried that schools could be penalised by Ofsted if, for example, they failed to cut teenage pregnancy rates or obesity levels.

Controversial plans: Ed Balls wants schools to take more responsibility for pupils' wellbeing

Mick Brookes, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: 'We see an increasing apparent responsibility for the ills of all society being planted on to schools.

'The danger of that, of course, is that they will be distracted from their core task which is good quality education.

'For some schools, the well-being agenda is one that isn't particularly applicable.

'The children appear to be thriving in their lives and we could have a reverse situation where these schools will be at the bottom of any such statistical analysis.'

Nick Seaton, of the Campaign for Real Education, said: 'Teachers should be concentrating on improving academic standards. It's ridiculous of the Government to expect them to be pseudo parents or pseudo social workers.'

Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, said: 'The Government seems obsessed with gathering statistics about every aspect of children's lives.

'It's worse than a nanny state. It's reducing children and schools to a series of numbers.'

Mr Balls said that schools will be 'accountable for whether they are contributing to child well-being', but they will not be expected to shoulder the responsibility 'individually' or be held to account for national issues such as obesity.

He said: 'The accountability for whether children are doing well, across the piece, is something that needs to be done area by area, rather than school by school.'

• A quarter of teenagers believe education is not important because they intend to be footballers, TV celebrities or pop stars. The Learning and Skills Council (LSC), which carried out a poll of 2,500 youngsters, urged them to be more realistic about their prospects of finding a job in popular sectors such as entertainment and sport. The least popular careers were in the armed forces, manufacturing and sales.