Schools 'should decide what teachers earn'

All state schools would be freed from teachers' national pay scales in order to award good classroom teachers higher salaries, under a Conservative government.

The pledge was made yesterday by Michael Gove, the shadow Education Secretary, as he made it clear he considered quality teaching was crucial to raising standards in schools.

"The countries which give their children the best education in the world are those which value their teachers most highly," he said. "From Finland to Singapore and South Korea the highest performing education systems are those where teachers enjoy the highest level of prestige.

"These nations have determinedly shaped policy to ensure that teaching is a high prestige profession, attracting the brightest graduates and offering a level of financial reward and social esteem which ensures teachers are seen as members of the nation's elite." England needed to copy that, he said. However, at present, only academies have the freedom to jettison national pay and conditions and decide their own staff's pay rates.

Mr Gove told a seminar in London that – under the Tories – schools would receive a "pupil premium" for every disadvantaged child on free school meals they took in. That, in effect, would mean that the most disadvantaged schools would be in the best position to offer higher salaries to reward classroom excellence. He said the performance of pupils from poorer homes was "a standing disgrace and a remarkable indictment of the lack of social mobility under Labour".

Only 1 per cent on free school meals (189 pupils) obtained three A grades at A-level. Of those, only 75 were boys.

"We discovered that in 2007, 95 boys from Eton got into Oxford or Cambridge," Mr Gove said. "So we live in a country where one public school sends more boys to our top universities than the entire population eligible for free school meals." He added: "We need to be able to attract high-performing graduates from the best universities into areas of disadvantage where the need to improve education is most urgent. We think it's important that schools are freed to pay good teachers more."

However, teachers' leaders warned that the biggest problem was retaining enough teachers in the profession.

Christine Blower, acting general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: "What the Conservatives need to concentrate on is not improving the lives financially of a few teachers, but to look at how the whole profession can be made more attractive. If money were put into reducing class sizes, ending the punitive system of testing and reducing workload, then teachers would be able to get on with the profession they chose to do, which is teach."

Mr Gove was also highly critical of the priority given by ministers to the academies programme.

The Conservatives' initiative came on the same day that the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, called for a dramatic reduction in class sizes to 15 in infant schools. At present, the legal limit is 30.