Gove heckled by teachers

The Education Secretary, Michael Gove (Getty Images)

Education Secretary Michael Gove was heckled yesterday when he told an audience of teachers that some of them lacked ambition for their pupils and were teaching in failing schools.

Mr Gove, who was addressing the Festival of Education at London University, told an audience of almost 1,000 that some schools lacked ambition for their pupils.

"Not everybody has high ambitions," he added. "There are schools that are inadequate and the people running those schools don't have sufficiently high ambitions for their schools."

Teachers heckled him, claiming that he had said he wanted to give them more freedom over what they taught but had ended up being too prescriptive.

He defended his proposals to make GCSE and A-level exams more rigorous by saying: "It is only when exams are genuinely tough that you get the best out of students and out of schools."

The Festival of Education was supported by The Independent on Sunday's sister paper, the i.