The 170-page, 10-year Children's Plan will aim to re-shape childhood and covers every aspect of children's lives, from how they spend their free time, to childhood obesity and the role parents play in their education.

Central to the proposals will be a drive to help schools engage more effectively with parents, especially at secondary level.

It will also suggest that parents be given a personal progress record on their child's development from the early years to primary school.

Parents will be contacted by a staff member before their child starts secondary school and will be given regular progress reports.

Parents' councils will ensure that parents' voices are heard in school, while a parents' panel will inform the government of their views.

Other key measures include a review of primary education, an earlier start for language learning, and changes to national pupil tests, as well as the provision of health and social services for children on secondary school sites, money for adventure playgrounds, and improved youth services.

The Children's Plan has been prompted by concerns that academic progress in British schools has stalled, amid a more general public unease about the state of childhood in the country, with fears about the pressures on children to grow up too fast in an increasingly menacing environment.

Last month, former Conservative leader Iain Duncan-Smith warned that Britain was in danger of creating a 'lost generation' of wayward teenagers responsible for rising levels of violence.

He said a toxic combination of family breakdown and school failure was creating a violent and anti-social youth culture.

But headteachers have warned that schools cannot 'correct all the ills of society'.

The Association of School and College Leaders - representing head teachers and senior staff - also cautions that schools could become 'overloaded' by the new expectations.

It complains that the government increasingly sees schools as a 'lever' to achieve its social policy, according to a report on the BBC News website.

Under the new plan, police officers may be permanently based in schools to provide positive role models for pupils and prevent anti-social behaviour.

Mr Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, has said he wants Britain to be 'the best place in the world for children to grow up'.

The aim is to provide a 'world-class' education.

But wider measures in the plan will include a review that will investigate evidence linking the advertising industry with increased anxiety, eating disorders and drinking among youngsters, said a report in the Daily Telegraph.

It will also look at the impact of the so-called 'sexualisation' of childhood through inappropriate music videos, magazine content and video games, and will investigate whether restrictions are needed on alcohol advertising to curb binge-drinking among teenagers.

A new generation of 'studio schools' will be created to give specialist tuition to problem pupils.

Schools for pupils aged between 14 and 19 will offer lessons in how to run a business, combining work experience with learning qualifications in an environment closer to a workplace than a classroom.

Pupils - most already excluded from mainstream school - will be trained in practical skills such as plumbing, mechanics or carpentry.

The plan will contain a drive to identify and help badly behaved children at an earlier age to cut crime later in life.

REUTERS