England's Department of Education launched its White Paper today putting the focus on "the importance of teaching".

Here are the government's proposals:

Teaching and leadership
Continue to raise the quality of new entrants to the teaching profession by:

• Ceasing to provide funding for initial teacher training for graduates who do not have at least a 2:2 degree
  
• Expanding Teach First
  
• Offering financial incentives to attract the very best graduates in shortage subjects
  
• Creating Teach Next to enable more high performers in other careers to become teachers
  

Reform Initial Teacher Training to:

• Increase trainees' time in the classroom
  
• Focus on core teaching skills and in managing behaviour
  
• Develop a national network of Teaching Schools on the model of Teaching Hospitals
  
• Reduce bureaucracy by cutting away unnecessary duties, processes, guidance and requirements

Behaviour
Increase the authority of teachers to discipline pupils by strengthening their powers to:

• Search pupils
• Issue same day detentions
• Use reasonable force

Strengthen headteachers' authority to maintain discipline beyond the school gates by:

• Improving exclusion processes
• Increasing power to tackle bullying, especially racist, homophobic and prejudice based bullying
• Change current system of independent appeals panels for exclusions
• Improve quality of alternative provision

• Speeding up investigations
• Legislating to grant teachers anonymity when accused by pupils
• Focusing Ofsted inspections on behaviour and safety

Curriculum, assessment and qualifications

• Review the National Curriculum to focus on core subject knowledge and allowing schools to decide how to teach
• Ensure support for systematic synthetic phonics
• Ensure proper assessment of pupils at each transitional stage of their education to provide information to parents about how well their child has done
• Introduce English Baccalaureate
• Hold an independent review of Key Stage 2 testing
• Reform vocational education so that it supports progression to further and higher education and employment
• Raise to 17 by 2013 and by 18 2015 the age to which young people will be expected to participate in education or training

New school system

• Increase freedom and autonomy for schools
• Restore for all academies the freedoms they originally had while continuing to ensure a level playing field on admissions, particularly for children with Special Educational Needs
• Extend the Academies programme
• Ensure support for schools to collaborate through Academy chains and multi-school trusts and federations
• Support teachers and parents to set up Free Schools
• Give local authorities a strategic role as 'champions' for parents, families and vulnerable pupils

Accountability

• Make more information public, so that it is possible to fully understand a school's performance
• Introduce a new measure of how well deprived pupils do
• Reform Ofsted inspection, so that inspectors spend more time in the classroom
• Establish a new 'floor standard' for primary and secondary schools, which sets an escalating minimum expectation for attainment
• Make it easier for schools to adopt models of governance which work for them

School improvement

• Give schools - governors, headteachers and teachers - responsibility for improvement
• Make sure schools have access to evidence of best practice, high quality materials and improvement services
• Establish a new collaboration incentive with financial rewards for schools which effectively support weaker schools

School funding

• Target more resources on the most deprived pupils over the next four years through a new Pupil Premium
• Consult on developing and introducing a clear, transparent and fairer national funding formula
• Increase the transparency of the current funding system
• End disparity in funding for 16-18 year olds, so that schools and colleges are funded at the same levels

To have your say on what you would have liked to have seen in the White Paper, click here

Click on the countries to find out how cuts will affect education in Wales or Scotland.