Tories: Make teachers tougher and smarter

Friday, 6 November 2009 12:00 AM

By politics.co.uk staff

Teachers should be better educated before they are given classes, the Tories have suggested.

In a keynote speech outlining the party's education policies, shadow educations secretary Michael Gove also said teachers would be given more robust powers to deal with pupil misbehaviour.

"A Conservative government will give every child the kind of education that is currently only available to the well-off: safe classrooms, talented and specialist teachers, access to the best curriculum and exams, and smaller schools where teachers know the children's names," Mr Gove said.

"The central mission of the next Conservative government is the alleviation of poverty and the extension of opportunity. And nowhere is action required more than in our schools. Schools should be engines of social mobility.

"The sad truth about our schools today is that, far from making opportunity more equal, they only deepen the divide between the rich and poor, the fortunate and the forgotten. It is a profoundly dispiriting story."

Those taking the PGCE course to become teachers would need a 2:2 from university.

Schools would be given greater power to search pupils and confiscate objects which could contribute to misbehaviour.

Detentions would be activated within 24 hours of the event and the current 'use of force' guidelines would be replaced.

Mr Gove also reiterated plans to adopt a Swedish educational model, encouraging free and faith schools.

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