We'll have an incoherent system where we are back to the pre-war idea that there are different types of children, where schools that don't select are like the old secondary moderns

Graham Lane, Local Government Association

By 2004, the government wants 1,000 secondary schools to have "specialist" status, which will give them extra funding for advanced teaching in technology, sport, the arts or modern languages.

These partially-selective schools have recorded the biggest improvements in exam results and received the backing of the prime minister at this year's Labour Party conference.

Second-class status

But local government leaders have expressed concern that as these schools become more desirable to parents and pupils - the other local comprehensives will acquire a second-class status.

The education chairman of the Local Government Association, Graham Lane, says that the government has not "thought through" the consequences of the specialist schools programme.

The government's efforts to distribute specialist schools evenly has meant that there will be a limit of one in three schools in each authority allowed specialist status.

But council leaders fear that this will mean re-creating the model of the grammar school and secondary moderns, in which there will be one over-subscribed, well-funded, partially-selective specialist school alongside two much less popular "ordinary" comprehensives.

"The Department for Education hasn't thought through how to fit in the specialist school programme in a way that doesn't lead to selection or unfairness," said Mr Lane.

"It will either result in a postcode selection lottery or we'll have an incoherent system where we are back to the pre-war idea that there are different types of children, where schools that don't select are like the old secondary moderns."