The shadow education secretary, Tristram Hunt, is to promise that every school in England and Wales will have a teacher dedicated to maintaining order.
He will say these specialist discipline teachers will be required to add simulated exercises to their training to ensure all who qualify are “classroom ready”.
Hunt is known to believe that discipline is the single biggest issue that motivates most voters about education, and in an article designed to court readers of the Sun, he promises to outflank the education secretary, Michael Gove, by being tough on classroom behaviour.
“For any great teacher, at the heart of it is behaviour management and concentration in the classroom,” he writes, adding “standards in our schools and kids getting jobs depend on it”.
Successive education secretaries have promised to act on discipline with policies ranging from quicker expulsions of disruptive children to improved pupil referral units.
It is not clear how much substance lies behind Hunt’s promise, made in a speech in which he sets out his plans for teachers to be subject to relicensing.