The Labour leader said schools are paying the price for going without “proper oversight” following allegations of a hardline Muslim plot in Birmingham.
Ed Miliband said education secretary Michael Gove was failing schools by not establishing proper local supervision amid the “Trojan Horse” allegations of an extremist plot.
Ofsted has carried out inspections at 21 schools in the city after leaked documents claimed Islamic hard-liners were looking to take over some schools by ousting non-Muslim staff through dirty trick campaigns.
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Mr Miliband told the Post: “We should have a local director of schools who can actually provide proper oversight of schools. You can’t do this from Whitehall.
“Michael Gove seems to be thinking you can provide this from Whitehall. He is proving he can’t.
“I don’t know the details of this, what I do know is as a general principle you have got to have proper local oversight of all the different types of schools.
“You have got to get away from this argument about structures, get into the argument about standards.”
Ofsted was called into the Birmingham schools amid mounting evidence that hardline Muslims had taken control of governing bodies and hounded or pushed out secular headteachers.
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A leaked official report found three of the schools, Park View, Golden Hillock and Nansen, had restricted subjects such as biology to comply with conservative Islamic teachings, invited extremist preachers to speak to students, and discriminated against girls and non-Muslim pupils.
At least six of the 21 are expected to be placed in special measures, with their leaders and governors removed, according to reports.
Meanwhile, Birmingham City Council leaders are understood to be angered by Mr Gove’s approach, which they feel is an attempt to point the finger of blame at the authority.
They are concerned that he might even take away the running of schools in the city from the council.
But Mr Miliband believes Mr Gove has to address problems in his own back yard.
He said: “I think he is passing the buck. He wants to point the finger of blame at somebody else.
“What he needs to do is get stuck in and help sort it out, but recognise we need a different system for the future.”
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MP Khalid Mahmood (Lab Perry Barr) told a Labour party meeting in Walsall that government policy had taken control away from the council.
He said: “It is partly the lack of control that the local education authority had. We have lost all that local control, and free schools and academies have taken that away. Therefore, the standards of controls that should have been there have been affected.”