Muslim schools should get state backing, according to the Conservative education spokesman.

Speaking at the party's conference in Blackpool, Damien Green told delegates it "would be wrong to deny the chance for Muslim schools".

Green said Muslim schools were "producing rounded children who leave the school gates every day to live in the same world in which everyone else lives".

"They are doing a good job in educating their children, and they deserve support and not suspicion," he said.

Green admitted that his party had failed to win over a sceptical public at the last election.

"For too long we did not convince the British people that we cared as much about education as they did," he said.

His speech did not contain any new policy announcements but there was a new conciliatory tone towards a teaching profession that has been on the receiving end of sharp rhetoric from Conservative conference speakers in the past.

"Our first task is to listen and learn. To learn from the people who run successful schools in this country. And to look at the successes in other countries, in the rest of Europe, the United States and elsewhere," he said.

"The first thing is that we should celebrate our teachers instead of knocking them. It is an easy, lazy and dishonest approach to blame the teachers," Green said.

He continued the party's stand against red tape and directives from central government and called for more different types of schools.

Green called for lessons in national institutions where pupils would be taught about parliament, the monarchy and law courts. Schools, he said, should "seek to pass on the values of our society as well as the skills".

He pledged to protect nursery places and look again at university funding.

"When we are again given the chance to help our country's children, we will rise to that challenge with relish," he said.