Teachers will lose esteem because of the NUT's 'antics', says Clarke

Parents appalled by the "antics" of delegates at the National Union of Teachers' conference will question whether they want their children taught by them, Charles Clarke will tells a conference today. The Secretary of State for Education will deliver a stern warning that teachers "will forfeit esteem if they start back down the path of strikes, boycotts and sending children home" advocated by the NUT.

He will tell its rival, the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, that the reason he boycotted the NUT was that he believes "nothing does more to depress the reputation and standing of teachers than to witness the annual antics that go on there". He will describe the conference as "posturing and sloganising at its worst, the sort of performance that the House of Commons or party conference never comes near to matching, even on a bad day" adding, "Parents and the public think: are these the people that teach our children?"

His speech is further evidence of the low ebb to which relations between the NUT and the Government have sunk. On Tuesday, Doug McAvoy, the general secretary of the NUT, accused the Government of "sinister McCarthyism" in freezing the union out of all contact with ministers and civil servants as a result of its refusal to sign an agreement on modernising the profession.

The NUT conference also voted to boycott national curriculum tests for 7, 11 and 14-year-olds, take strike action over redundancy threats to teachers because of budget shortfalls, and refuse to work with classroom assistants if they took over the job of a qualified teacher.

Mr Clarke will take on the union over its proposed boycott and insist that the national curriculum tests, taken by nearly two million pupils a year, are here to stay.

"And so are targets," Mr Clarke will add. In a sideswipe at his Liberal Democrat and Conservative opponents, who have pledged to scrap targets for tests and exams, he will say: "When politicians come along and say 'away with tests and away with targets' then I have to say they are living in Alice's Wonderland. Goals and targets set a standard."

Mr Clarke will tell the NASUWT it has taken people of vision and courage to get the modernisation agreement off the drawing board.

However, Eamonn O'Kane, general secretary of the NASUWT, will seek a pledge from Mr Clarke that the agreement will not lead to teachers being substituted by classroom assistants in schools facing financial difficulties. "If he does not, I will have something to say about it in my response to his speech," he said.

He would also like the Government to review its performance targets for tests. But yesterday he attacked Phil Willis, the Liberal Democrat education spokesman for "parroting NUT propaganda" when he claimed the agreement would lead to class sizes of 60. "That is such an outrageous statement that I am amazed it is being repeated by a respectable politician," he said.