Troops encouraged into classrooms as Gove overhauls schools system

Unveiling his education White Paper in the House of Commons, Mr Gove told MPs that it provided "the opportunity to become the world's leading education nation".

Mr Gove's package includes new achievement targets which could lead to as many as 400 more schools being tagged as "underperforming".

Secondary schools will be subject to intense scrutiny if less than 35% of their pupils get five C grades at GCSE, including English and maths, and fewer students are making two levels of progress between the ages of 11 and 16 (Key Stages 3 and 4) than the national average.

Where schools are found to fall below standard, "outstanding headteachers" will be brought in to help "raise the bar on achievement".

The training process for new teachers will be overhauled, with a new generation of "teaching schools" will be established, along the lines of teaching hospitals, as showcases of the best classroom practice.

Former troops will be encouraged to retrain as teachers and there will be an expansion in the TeachFirst programme to attract top graduates into the classroom, as well as a new TeachNext scheme for people switching careers.

And there will be subsidies for graduates going into teaching in key subjects like science and maths.

Qualification reforms will include "stripping out" modules from GCSE courses to restore the focus on exams. Markers will be told to recognise good spelling, punctuation and grammar in GCSE papers.

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

Labour warned that Mr Gove risked creating a "two-tier education system" where the requirements of academic pupils are put ahead of those wanting to pursue more vocational courses.

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, Mr Gove plans to give teachers stronger powers to search students and impose detentions and exclusions, as well as clearer rules on the use of force.

Teachers will be protected from false allegations by pupils and there will be support for schools which introduce traditional uniforms, prefects and house systems.

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.

As increasing numbers of schools become independent of council control, local authorities will take on a role of "parents' champion" helping to ensure that parents choose schools, rather than schools choosing pupils, said Mr Gove.

The Education Secretary 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 very best performing education systems have a rigorous focus on high standards, a determination to narrow attainment gaps and have stretching curricula.

"The countries that come out top of international studies into educational performance recognise that the most crucial factor in determining how well children do at school is the quality of their teachers.

"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."

It was "shocking" that only 40 of the 80,000 children in England eligible for school meals won places at Oxford or Cambridge universities last year, he said.

"That's why the Coalition Government plans to recruit more great people into teaching, train our existing teachers better and free them from bureaucracy and Whitehall control," said Mr Gove.

"We are putting teachers in the driving seat of school improvement and we are setting out changes that will make schools more accountable to their communities and their parents."

The reforms won strong support from Prime Minister, David Cameron, who said: "These radical proposals will give teachers both the freedom and the authority in the classroom that's needed if we are to realise our ambition to drive up standards, improve discipline and behaviour and deliver the world class education that our children deserve."