A NEW system to ‘rate’ primary school pupils could lead to a return of the ‘deeply damaging 11-plus system’, it has been warned.

Teaching unions and school leaders in East Lancashire condemned the deputy prime minister Nick Clegg’s announcement to place children in 10 per cent ability bands and to tell their parents where their child was ranked.

They said the idea was ‘unnecessary’ and could risk children being labelled as failures from an early age.

But Mr Clegg said that the plans would ensure that youngsters were ready for secondary school education.

Under the plans, pupil's national curriculum test results would be divided into bands and parents and schools would be able to see how their children had performaed on a national scale. Mark Standen, headteacher at Holy Trinity CofE Primary School, in Darwen, said: “I am not interested in knowing how my children are doing on a national scale, I am interested in knowing how they are doing within my school and allowing them to get a good education.

“We are going to be in the bottom 10 per cent because of where we are in the country and that is just saying that we are rubbish and sends out the wrong message. I just think it is unnecessary and it is almost like going back to the grammar schools and pointing out who is the cleverest and who is going to pass.”

Claire Ward, from the National Association of Schoolmasters and Union of Women Teachers in the North West, said she agreed the tables would risk a return of elitism.

She said: “Producing performance tables which rank individual pupils against their peers nationally could also result in children being labelled as failures at an early age.

“The Government should consider carefully whether this sensitive information should be made available to other schools given the risk of a return to an 11-plus system of selection.”