Labour's planned new curriculum will be dropped as part of a £359m programme of education cuts

The government will scrap Labour's new primary curriculum and its flagship "academic" diplomas, ministers said today as they detailed a £359m programme of education cuts.

Michael Gove, the education secretary, also said he would drop a proposed extension of pilot schemes offering free school meals to all primary pupils, although three existing schemes will continue to assess the case for increasing eligibility.

Ministers will also take £47m of unspent cash back from one-to-one tuition programmes for pupils falling behind in English and maths.

The new primary curriculum, which was due to start in September next year, would have split primary teaching into six new "areas of learning", with information and communication technology (ICT) a core skill. Stopping it, and cutting initiatives in personal, social and health education, citizenship and RE, will save £7m.

The government will save £22.2m by pulling the plug on the academic diplomas being developed in humanities, science and languages and scaling back promotion and support for existing vocational diplomas in other subjects. The move is part of a drive towards a more traditional exam system that will also see state schools allowed for the first time to teach the international GCSEs (iGCSEs) favoured by many in the independent sector for their supposed greater rigour.

Gove, said iGCSEs, which will be available in core subjects such as English and maths from September, would allow pupils at state secondaries to compete on a level playing field with their privately educated peers.

Schools minister Nick Gibb said: "Schools must be given greater freedom to offer the qualifications employers and universities demand, and that properly prepare pupils for life, work and further study. For too long, children in state maintained schools have been unfairly denied the right to study for qualifications like the iGCSE, which has only served to widen the already vast divide between state and independent schools."

But John Dunford, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said iGCSEs did not meet the rigorous standards of normal GCSEs.

The cuts are part of savings of £670m from the education department ordered by the chancellor, George Osborne. Local authorities also face cuts of £311m.

Ed Balls, the shadow education secretary, accused Gove of glossing over how cuts to council budgets will affect services for looked after children, disabled children, youth clubs and action to reduce teenage pregnancy.

"He has knowingly shifted the burden to bigger and more damaging cuts for essential children's services financed by local government," said Balls.