REDDITCH MP Jacqui Smith has been attacked by headteachers after rejecting calls to give parents vouchers for private education.

The Minister for Schools was given a hostile reception when she told delegates at the Headmasters and Headmistresses Conference there was no prospect of reintroducing a form of assisted places scheme, which was scrapped by Labour in 1997.

At the Sutton Coldfield conference, she said: "Some of you have called for Government support for more assisted places. But I don't believe in a system where only a few are given the keys to a room at the top, or where equality means everyone gets just one chance to do well.

"Isn't the answer to ensure that excellence and challenge, wherever it comes from, is drafted into the state education system rather than to provide a few with an escape route out?"

Her remarks followed calls from the conference chairman, Priscilla Chadwick, for a new system of state vouchers to be introduced for parents to spend on an independent school education.

Headteachers from the country's leading independent schools have accused the Government of being immersed in an "old ideology".