The government must curb the power of headteachers to permanently exclude pupils, a former Conservative education secretary has said.

Lord Baker, who introduced the national curriculum under Margaret Thatcher, told a House of Lords debate on social mobility that heads’ capacity to expel children had “now grown out of all proportion”.

His comments this afternoon came amid rising exclusion rates and growing concerns about off-rolling, whereby pupils are removed from the roll in a bid to manipulate exam success rates.

Lord Baker said primary schools do “a good job” regarding social mobility, but progress “runs into the sand at later stages” - particularly when pupils transfer to secondary school.

He told peers that enthusiastic primary school children become “disenchanted, disengaged, fed up” with “not learning anything that is going to help them get a job”.

Lord Baker said the experience leads to high absentee rates and unruly behaviour, while some pupils are expelled by their heads in key stage 3.

“The capacity of heads to expel has now grown out of all proportion,” he added.

“There’s going to be a report on this to the government, and the government is going to have to restrain the capacity of heads to expel children because an expelled child is on the road to a culture of gangland, there is no question about that at all.”

The peer also branded the curriculum introduced by fellow Conservative Michael Gove during his tenure as education secretary between 2010-14 as a “disaster”.

He said: “The reason why they are disengaged, those children, is that they are following the Gove curriculum, a highly concentrated academic curriculum, which is called Progress 8 and EBacc, which I think is a disaster.”

Lord Baker cited statistics showing the decline of technical education, drama, dance, media and film studies, music, and performing and expressive arts.

He added: “The well-rounded curriculum I tried to devise in the late 1980s is now disappearing from our schools, and that is one of the reasons why youngsters are so disenchanted and disengaged.”

Lord Baker, who chairs the Baker-Dearing Educational Trust, which supports university technical colleges (UTCs), extolled the virtues of the technical education provided by UTCs - an issue that has led him to clash with Mr Gove in the past.

Responding to Lord Baker’s criticism of the EBacc, education minister Lord Agnew said: “It is aimed particularly at those from less advantaged backgrounds, particularly those who were being restricted in their ability to go to good universities.”