By Sean Coughlan BBC News education reporter

Ruth Kelly says councils must expand places where needed

Wider choices for individual pupils will be the priority for the next phase of education reforms, says Education Secretary Ruth Kelly.

This will mean an emphasis on parental choice and individual learning - and will raise questions about how services are delivered by schools.

"Choice and personalisation" will be the key themes of a forthcoming White Paper on schools, says Ms Kelly.

This could include funding transport if pupils needed to travel further.

And it could raise difficult questions about how pupils from disadvantaged areas can have fair access to high-achieving schools in wealthier areas.

Deprived

"We need to think about why children from more deprived backgrounds do not always have the opportunity to access the better schools, and what sensibly, we might be able to do about that," said Ms Kelly, speaking at the IPPR think-tank.

The central challenge is to ensure that the local decision making system is more responsive to the needs and desires of parents and their children Ruth Kelly, Education Secretary

Among the options to be considered could be enlarging existing popular schools, "bussing" pupils to successful schools, providing extra places through new school providers and building links with independent schools.

Local authorities would be expected to help "expand capacity in the places where parents want it, as well as moving much faster to sort out schools in trouble," said the education secretary.

"There are complex factors at work here, some of which revolve around housing patterns themselves. But others, like the sometimes prohibitive costs of transport or the lack of awareness among some parents of the opportunities available, are ones that we must think very hard about," she said.

'Equity and excellence'

At present, particularly in urban areas, there have been complaints that getting a place in desirable state schools has been determined by being able to afford a house in the catchment area.

The White Paper on schools, set to be published in the autumn, seems set to try to change the relationship between the providers of education, such as schools, and the consumers, such as pupils, parents and employers.

Rather than emphasising the needs of institutions, it wants to give more attention to the individual needs of pupils.

"The central challenge is to ensure that the local decision making system is more responsive to the needs and desires of parents and their children. I want to think about how the local authority could help us inject more dynamism, flexibility and choice into the system," said Ms Kelly.

A "personalised" education would be tailored more specifically to the needs of both less able and gifted pupils - and the education secretary said there was more information available now about individual pupils' progress - rather than the institution.

Promising "radical reform", Ms Kelly said that as well as looking at institutions, there was a need to "really look hard at how every child within an institution is doing".

The White Paper will have the dual aim of "excellence and equity", she says, and that giving pupils and families better informed choices will help to narrow the gap between the achievement of pupils from rich and poor backgrounds.