But successful schools will be allowed greater autonomy.
Local residents are skeptical that girls' schools will be allowed to reopen.
Schools will be allowed to serve children meat that has been sterilized through irradiation, the Agriculture Department has decided.
Schools will be allowed to merge under one head or a single governing body, and share specialist teachers.
Updated at 10.50am BST 10.45am BST Labour's Barry Sheerman asks for an assurance that no schools will be allowed to treat girls and boys differently.
She will confirm that new selective schools will be allowed to open and that existing schools will be able to become grammars.
All state-funded schools will be allowed to prioritise places for children from the poorest backgrounds under a new draft admissions code.
An awkward compromise is proposed: no new selective schools will be allowed, apart from schools with a specialist flavour (such as music or languages), which will be allowed to select by ability in their specialist subject.
Decisions about daily operations and policies will be turned over to committees of principals, teachers, parents, college educators and community leaders, and the schools will be allowed to modify their curriculum to address the needs of students.
Under the ruling, the 53 children in Pensacola, Fla., who are now using vouchers to attend private schools will be allowed to finish out the semester, but the state will not pay their tuition next year.
These schools will be allowed to convert into semi-independent academies as early as September this year if the Tories win, giving them more power over the curriculum, qualifications, staff, budgets and, most crucially, admissions.
