Conservative Top Ten Schools Policies

1. We will change the law to make it easier for teachers to deal with violent incidents, remove disruptive pupils, and physically restrain disruptive children without fear of legal action.
2. We will change the law to give teachers a general legal power to ban any items they think may cause violence or disruption - a power the Government refuses to give because of human rights laws.
3. We will end the right to appeal against exclusion to an independent panel, which has sent children expelled for knife crime back to the school they were excluded from.
4. We will scrap the Standard Assessment Test at the end of the second year of primary school and replace it with a simple reading test so that every parent will know whether their child has been taught to read.
5. Heads need more control over staff pay and conditions. We will give all headteachers the power to pay bonuses to teachers based on teaching and dealing with violence, disruption, and bullying. Schools must be able to attract specialists - especially in reading, maths and science.
6. We will create 'Teach Now' to expand the number of highly qualified people in teaching. These graduates could learn on the job, like with the successful Teach First programme, instead of having to spend a year in a college as now.
7. We will create an independent body to ensure exams are tied to world class standards. We will give state schools the same freedom as independent schools - the freedom to offer their pupils the best international exams, which the Government does not allow now.
8. We will create a new generation of independent, free, and non-selective primary and secondary Academies, so that different communities, form deprived inner cities to rural villages, can create and nurture good local schools. We will change the rules to make it much easier for groups of parents and other organisations, such as educational charities, to start new Academies. We will give all parents the power to take their child out of a state school, apply to a new Academy, and automatically transfer the per pupil funding from the old school to the new Academy.
9. We will allow successful schools to opt out of political control and become independent Academies.
10. We will make sure that badly run schools, such as those with major behavior problems, are taken over by new leadership with a record of success. There must be greater freedom for teachers from political interference and more responsibility of schools to parents.