Every pupil to get individual timetable

Every secondary school pupil will have his or her own tailor-made timetable under classroom reforms which will be announced next week.

Every secondary school pupil will have his or her own tailor-made timetable under classroom reforms which will be announced next week.

Teachers will be told that they must devise an individual curriculum for each child so that they can pursue their own strengths and subject interests.

The move will mark a major shift away from the 15-year-old national curriculum for all secondary school pupils to a much more flexible timetable.

A five-year blueprint for the future of education, to be published by the Department for Education and Skills on Thursday, will sweep away the concept of 30 children in a class all learning the same lesson. Instead, schools will be encouraged to set up "internet café"-style classrooms where as many as 120 youngsters can be working on computers at the same time.

The new-style classrooms - described as the 21st-century equivalent of the school library - will allow them to study a range of different subjects online. They will be able to have lessons in minority subjects not available at their own school to GCSE and A-level through an online tutor.

An example is Latin, where the Cambridge University Classics Project has devised a DVD so that pupils can learn the language online. An online tutor will be available to help with questions and an accompanying DVD is available so that a teacher can learn the language at the same time as the pupils - the only difference between the two DVDs being that the teacher's has all the answers.

It will also enable schools to tap into the teaching expertise of neighbouring specialist schools. On Thursday, the Government announced that more than half of the country's secondary schools - 1,952 - were now specialists.