British schools to focus on better discipline

London: Trainee teachers will be instilled with a zero-tolerance approach to ill-discipline in school.

They will be taught to bring back the traditions of pupils standing when a teacher enters the room and of keeping quiet in corridors.

Trainees unable to prove they can control a rowdy classroom will not qualify for a teaching post.

The radical shake-up by Education Secretary Michael Gove is designed to raise standards in state education.

New teachers will have to punish any pupil who steps outside strict codes of behaviour.

They will learn to discipline, or even send home, pupils who fail to turn up to their class without the right equipment such as a pencil and paper.

All trainees will have to sit personality tests to prove their resilience and ability to remain calm under pressure. And the majority of their training will be conducted on the job in a classroom rather than in a university lecture hall.

Recruiting the best

Headmasters will have the power to sack teachers who cannot control their class.

Gove will also announce that graduates with first-class degrees will be handed £20,000 (Dh117,998) bursaries to train for a year as teachers.

The reforms to recruit only the best come as figures show ten per cent of teachers leave the profession after a year often because they cannot handle a class. On Monday, Daily Mail revealed that some teachers were handed jobs despite failing numeracy tests up to 37 times. Gove has limited the number of resits a trainee can take to two from 2012.

The new system of tapered bursaries will be introduced for postgraduate trainees.

Students with first-class degrees are expected to receive up to £20,000 to teach secondary school subjects such as maths, physics and chemistry, which suffer the biggest staff shortages.

They would receive £13,000 to teach medium-priority specialities such as languages, IT and design and technology, and £9,000 to teach other secondary subjects and to work in primary schools.

Students with a 2:1 degree would get £15,000 to teach shortage subjects, while those with 2:2s would receive £11,000.

Funding will be withdrawn for graduates holding less than a 2:2 degree. The tax-free bursaries can be spent however the student wishes, but it is likely that there will be an obligation to remain in the profession for an agreed period once they have completed their training.

The funds for the scheme will be found within the existing £500 million teacher training budget. It is also expected that funding will be axed from some undergraduate teacher training courses as part of a shift toward training in schools.