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Yesterday, David Cameron announced our plans for improving schools.

By raising standards, improving discipline, increasing choice, and getting the best people into teaching, we will make sure that the poorest children get the best education, not the worst.

We announced plans to fast-track professionals into teaching to ensure the best possible teachers are in the classroom. It’s time we made our teaching the best. That’s why we’re committed to a comprehensive programme of reform to elevate the status of teaching in our country. We want to make it the noble profession – the career path that attracts the best brains, is well-rewarded and commands the most respect.

We will:
• raise the entry requirement for taxpayer-funded primary school teacher training from a C grade in English and Maths GCSE to a B;
• require graduates to have at least a 2:2 in their degree in order to qualify for state-funded training;
• pay the student loan repayments for top maths and science graduates for as long as they remain teachers;
• expand Teach First and introduce two new programmes – Teach Now and Troops to Teachers – to get experienced, high-quality people into the profession;
• give all headteachers the power to pay good teachers more.

For more information or to view the schools chapter of our draft manifesto, please click on this link.

Note on erroneous local and national coverage on this issue:

I am a very proud of the University of Bedfordshire and am a vocal supporter of it's achievements.  I have visited the campus many times, met with the VC, Les Ebdon, and will be visiting the Student Union president later this week. 

The University plays a vital role in the current Luton economy and will play an even more pivotal role in the future.  Many students at the university go on to teach.  The university is rightly proud of that record.

Yesterday, however, some erroneous press releases were sent out by various parties misinterpreting or confusing Conservative party policy and implying that graduates from our University would not be able to become teachers.  Where on earth they got that idea from I don't know.  Nothing could be further from the truth. 

Many graduates from the University fo Bedfordshire meet the high criteria identified by David Cameron yesterday.  For anyone to suggest or imply otherwise is insulting to both the University and the quality of students that attend it. To do a PGCE at the Univesity of Bedfordshire and qualify as a teacher, the entry criteria is already that the candidate has a second class degree!

To be clear:
Our policy is designed to increase the quality of the people who teach our children. All the evidence is that the quality of a child’s teacher is the single biggest factor in their education – in all the leading countries in the world teaching is a profession of the very highest prestige.

This is why we will work to enhance the prestige of the teaching profession overall through more training and recognition - including allowing head teachers to pay good teachers more. I think it’s exactly right that we should only fund teaching training for primary school trainees who have a B in basic GCSE subjects rather than a C and that we should make a 2:2 the minimum requirement for a secondary school trainee teacher to get taxpayer funded training.

Ask any parent in Luton whether they would rather have their child taught by a teacher with a first class or a third class degree and you will get a consistent response.

But nothing in any Tory announcement said anything about excluding graduates from entering the teaching profession from any specific Universities.  This is a complete falsehood.