WENDY ALEXANDER has ditched her party's plan to raise the school leaving age to 18, the Sunday Herald can reveal.

The Labour leader has decided the policy, which was backed by her predecessor Jack McConnell and endorsed by Gordon Brown, will not be part of her education reform package. She instead favours giving school leavers a "guarantee" of a modern apprenticeship, or the right to a training place.

The move comes as Alexander prepares to stabilise her leadership at the Scottish Labour conference in Aviemore later this week.

Her short stint in the job has been overshadowed by the prolonged row over her accepting an illegal donation for her leadership campaign.

She admitted breaking the law by taking £950 from Jersey businessman Paul Green but hopes to recover by laying out plans for far-reaching internal party reform and policy development.

Alexander will this week publish a pamphlet, Change Is What We Do, which sets out her thinking on health, constitutional change and education.

In a briefing to journalists ahead of the conference, Alexander confirmed that raising the school leaving age to 18, one of Labour's flagship policies at the last Scottish election, has been dropped. "We are looking at it again," she said. "We think that the preferable way to go would be the guaranteed modern apprenticeship.

"We are firmly committed to the idea that it should not be possible to leave school and go on the dole, but not that you are compelled to stay on in a school environment."

The policy was heavily associated with McConnell, the former first minister, and is also backed by the UK government. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has personally endorsed raising the school leaving age and has attacked the SNP government for not backing it, saying: "It's important they recognise that other countries are moving forward on this so we should not be left behind."

Scrapping the policy allows Alexander to put distance between herself and McConnell, and will be shown as proof that she can pursue different policies to those enacted by Labour at Westminster.

Her own agenda includes giving headteachers more autonomy, funding one-to-one education for struggling pupils, backing the introduction of personal advisers for secondary school pupils, and creating a literacy commission.

The policy departure is further evidence that Alexander is ditching many of the policies once cherished by McConnell. She is known to be scathing about the state of the party left behind by McConnell when he quit as leader last August after the party's Holyrood election defeat in May.

A chunk of this week's conference will focus on Alexander's plan to overhaul the organisation of Scottish Labour, a task she believes has been neglected in the past. Central to her reform agenda will be the creation of three new bodies: an association of Labour councillors; an ethnic minorities taskforce; and a "liaison" committee including MSPs, MPs and other elected representatives.

Scottish Labour is also set to announce a new director of communications, who will work closely with three recently appointed party organisers.

Alexander used the briefing to suggest the donation scandal is behind her. "I have moved on and I think the news agenda has moved on," she said. Asked to comment on her party's big drop in poll ratings, she said: "It's been a hard few months for Labour."

An SNP spokesman said: "First of all, Wendy Alexander's leadership was marked by a fiddle, and now it seems to be descending into muddle and guddle.

Referring to Alexander's creation of a commission to look into increasing devolved power at Holyrood, he added: "This looks like a clumsy attempt to airbrush Jack McConnell out of the Labour picture, and create distance between Wendy and Gordon Brown - at the very time Downing Street has grabbed control of her commission and downgraded it to a London-led working party."