Discipline at heart of school system shake-up

Announcing the White Paper The Importance of Teaching Mr Gove said it provided "the opportunity to become the world's leading education nation".

The major overhaul includes changing the way schools are run, encouraging them to introduce blazer and tie uniforms and return to traditional prefect and house systems.

Further measures include a return to one-off exams taken at the end of courses, instead of tests in "bite-size" modules, and an emphasis on traditional values with additional marks for good grammar and spelling in GCSEs.

A new generation of teaching schools will be established, similar to teaching hospitals, and a "Troops to Teachers" programme will encourage service personnel leaving the forces to re-train as teachers.

Secondary schools will be subject to intense scrutiny if fewer than 35 per cent of their pupils get five C grades at GCSE, including English and maths, and fewer students are hitting two levels of progress between the ages of 11 and 16 than the national average.

Mr Gove said: "Many other countries in the world are improving their schools faster than us, and have smaller gaps between the achievements of rich and poor.

"The best education systems draw their teachers from among the top graduates and train them rigorously, focusing on classroom practice. They recognise that it is teachers' knowledge, intellectual depth and love of their subject which stimulates the imagination of children and allows them to flourish and succeed.

"But for too long in our country, teachers and heads have been hamstrung by bureaucracy and left without real support."

The new achievement targets could lead to 400 schools being tagged as "underperforming". According to Ofsted, there are currently 76 schools in Yorkshire that are either failing or "performing significantly less well than they might".

Performance tables will judge schools not only on numbers of pupils achieving five good GCSEs in English and maths, but also science, foreign languages and a humanities subject.

The shake-up is likely to promote a take-up of languages, as well as other traditional subjects such as history and geography, effectively rewarding schools where pupils opt for core subjects.

To improve discipline, teachers will receive stronger powers to search students and impose detentions and exclusions, as well as clearer rules on the use of force.

There will be changes to school performance tables, Ofsted inspections and governance, and a "pupil premium" system will channel more money to the most deprived children.

But the White Paper was described as a "vicious assault" on teachers by the Chris Keates, general secretary of the teachers' union NASUWT.

"The Secretary of State's statements are a disgraceful denigration and misrepresentation of the performance of schools and teachers," he said.

Amid accusations he was returning to a 1950s style system, Mr Gove said: "What we are doing is accelerating into the future, doing what they are doing in other countries in Asia and Scandinavia, and North America, who have better quality education systems than us. We are learning from them."

Main points of reforms

The radical changes to the education system include:

A national network of teaching schools to be set up.

Teachers will have greater powers to search pupils, and use reasonable force where necessary.

Staff facing malicious allegations will be given anonymity.

"Troops to Teachers" programme to encourage service personnel to re-train.

A return to traditional prefect and house systems.

2.5bn per year to be spent in schools with children from deprived backgrounds through the pupil premium.

Schools to be rewarded where pupils opt for core subjects.