The Education Secretary, Charles Clarke, said proposals would be in the formal response to an education select committee report.

That said ministers should be honest about their attitudes to selection.

It urged them to scrap the power that many specialist schools have, to select up to 10% of their pupils by "aptitude" for their specialist subject.

SELECTION BY 'APTITUDE' Specialist schools which can select 10% of pupils: performing arts, sports, music, modern languages and technology Specialist schools which cannot select: maths, science, engineering, business and enterprise and humanities Over 60% of English secondary schools are specialists

The committee said there was no difference between that approach and selection by academic ability.

In a question-and-answer session with Labour conference delegates in Brighton, Mr Clarke was challenged more than once on the issue of selection - which also sees children in some areas having the option of taking an 11-plus exam for grammar school places.

'Quite wrong'

Mr Clarke said he believed the 11-plus was "quite the wrong way for anybody to be chosen to go to school in any way whatsoever. It does a disservice to all the children who go through that system."

We steadily have to reduce it and that is the right way for us to go Charles Clarke

But he said there were "political issues" around the subject which - in Gloucester for instance - "generated tremendous power".

He added: "I know it is controversial with some colleagues in the party and I can give the assurance however that we are moving, in response to the education select committee, to reduce the aspects of selection in the system.

"We steadily have to reduce it and that is the right way for us to go."

Later he said the response to the select committee "will have the effect of reducing the impact of selection within the system".

That would be "in the fairly near future", he added.

In its five-year plan for education, in July, the government promised that it would not extend selection.

'Scaremongering'

Just under 2,000 of England's 3,500 or so secondary schools have gained specialist status, with the rest due to follow by 2008.

But only about 6% of existing specialist schools which can select by aptitude have chosen to use the power.

In his conference speech, Mr Clarke had accused the Tories of planning to bring back selection at the ages of five as well as 11.

The shadow education secretary, Tim Collins, said: "This is rampant scaremongering by Charles Clarke. We have no plans for selection at the age of five, or a return to the 11-plus.

"Under our Right to Choose policy more children will have the chance to attend a good school, and with the expansion in places we are commited to funding, schools will increasingly compete for pupils, rather than the other way around."