'Lord Puttnam, the Chairman of the General Teaching Council, would like to make it very clear that this interview was based entirely on his personal views gained from three and a half years of visiting schools and talking to teachers.'

Question: Why do you think we need a General Teaching Council?

Lord Puttnam: It's an ambition that was harboured by the profession for over 100 years. I read a very good book recently on the history of the NUT and it seems to have been a recurring theme with them to a point at which, in the 1960s, they were lobbying very hard and anticipated it would actually be up and running in 1970. It all fell apart that time but the lobbying started again in the mid '80s, culminating in a commitment by the incoming Labour government in '97. It is not for me to say what made teachers feel they needed a G.T.C. One important reason might have been the opportunity it allowed for them to speak with a unified voice. The teaching unions had decided for their own reasons of history that it was a appropriate to represent their members through six separate bodies. In making that determination they opened themselves up to the problem of disunity and it's likely that a General Teaching Council was seen as the most sensible way of addressing that.

Question: So what are your key priorities for the General Teaching Council?

Lord Puttnam: To make it very clear to government that teachers are capable of articulating their ambitions for their profession in a unified and persuasive manner, and that what has always appeared to me to be a kind of Easter 'end of the pier ritual', during which different unions attempt to score points off each other, is in most respects, a distraction from the day to day realities of teachers working lives, and does the profession as a whole enormous harm. I think there's an ever greater need for teachers to be seen as real professionals, with a strong interest and ability to deliver a world class education in a globally competitive environment. I think some of Chris Woodhead's global assaults did a very great deal of damage to that ambition. For the most part they were completely unjustified, but they did possibly serve to alarm teachers to the way they were perceived. It is rather odd that any individual was able to achieve that amount of attention to his views despite the fact that 450,000 teachers in this country, day in and day out, were proving that most of his assertions were essentially untrue.

Question: What effect do you think the Prime Minister's press secretary talking of 'bog standard comprehensives' had on teachers morale?

Lord Puttnam: I think it was damaging. It was ill-timed and unhelpful. You could however look at it another way. If the emotional health of teachers was stronger, if they didn't feel so beleaguered, it is the sort of thing a confident profession could probably laugh off. That a silly off-the-cuff remark can be perceived to be so damaging is indicative of the pressure teachers feel themselves to be under. It also shows a remarkable lack of understanding of how vulnerable teachers feel themselves to be.

Question: Nigel de Gruchy claims that teachers have suffered from excessive increases in workload and bureaucracy under this government. Would you agree?

Lord Putnam: In the case of bureaucracy, I think there have been serious attempts by the Department, who in the end are responsible, to reduce the overall amount of paperwork. Having said that, we undoubtedly have reached almost a point of obsession with the concept of accountability. I think that unfortunately this is not just true for teachers, it is true in most areas of public service. We appear to have lost or abandoned the concept of trust. Trust has in effect been replaced by a seemingly unquestioning addiction to accountability, and accountability requires paperwork, requires all sorts of other stuff which normal trusting human beings find irritating. In fact it's beyond irritating to effectively be asked to fill in a form that says 'yes I am honest', 'yes I work hard', 'yes I do the very best I can by my pupils'. It is offensive to be asked to sign up to exactly what, day in and day out, you know yourself to have been doing!

Question: But they would argue that it measures standards, it measures accountability?

Lord Puttnam: Are you suggesting that bureaucracy is there solely to measure standards? I think what we are seeing is the refinement of what used to be called "passing the buck". It is a way of Government (and the media) feeling they always have someone to blame. It's all part and parcel of our rapidly developing "blame culture". As long as someone is prepared to fill in the forms and take responsibility it means that the person who prepares the form and checks it no longer need concern themselves with the outcome. What you are talking about didn't start with this government, all of us in the UK have trapped ourselves into a cycle of blame and counter-blame. It's almost as if we spend our lives seeking different and ever more complex ways to ensure that if things go wrong it isn't our fault. It's a Teutonic trait, not particularly Anglo-Saxon at all!

Question: So what is your message to Mr Blunkett in terms of workload and bureaucracy for teachers?

Lord Puttnam: I have a problem with the word "bureaucracy", because it's a word that can so easily be misused. I think all too often it tends to be used in a propagandist manner. One person's notion of bureaucracy is another person's idea of legitimate accountability. So I don't have much truck with the word bureaucracy. Workload is a far more interesting and difficult issue. I think 90 per cent of teachers are overworked, and I am not even sure that their time is used as well as it might be. I was amazed when I spent a week working at a school in Liverpool, I had never before appreciated that the bell, the school bell, which I thought was there for pupils, is actually there for teachers. The bell determines the rhythm of the teacher's day. You see them coming in to the staff room for a coffee break. They have barely poured their coffee and sat down then the bell goes off again. I was incredibly impressed by how diligent they are. They have to get to the classroom before the kids, or at least with the very first of them. And somehow they do it. I came to realise that the pressure is enormous. I think the amount of responsibility teachers are asked to absorb, much of which has little or nothing to do with the actual process of teaching, is ludicrous. The idea that a talented teacher is spending time doing playground duty and acting almost as a child minder seems somehow absurd. There are any number of people, volunteers out there, who would be more than happy, paid or unpaid, to take up a lot of the strain. It's also the case in many parts of the country, that teachers are front line social workers. We are asking them to sort out many of the problems of society, the stuff the rest of us are ignoring or unable to cope with. I don't think this was ever part and parcel of society's compact with the teaching profession, but that's effectively what we are asking them to take care of.

Question: OK, we will come to that a bit later, but if we go back to workload - what's your message to Mr Blunkett ?

Lord Puttnam: It is not just Mr Blunkett. I think there needs to be a greater understanding from within the entire department. In the end whilst attitudes can be set by government, they are determined by civil servants. I would like to see a far, far closer relationship between the teacher in the classroom and the people who are supposed to be servicing them within the education sector.

Question: Do you think that civil servants should do secondments in the classroom?

Lord Puttnam: Without doubt. I don't think anyone should be part of the broad world of delivering education without having spent some time in the classroom, if for no other reason than to understand what it's like to be at the sharp end. There is a serious disconnection between the people administering policy, and what it is like at the chalk face. Believe me, it is very very different.

Question: Moving from secondments to sabbaticals. You want teachers to be offered sabbaticals. Isn't there a fear though, if there are loads of stressed out and disillusioned teachers that they won't want to return?

Lord Puttnam: I think that's the kind of fear that inevitably leads you to do nothing at all. No, what the G.T.C. wants is to re-establish the notion that teachers are special, that the job they do is special. They are never going to be millionaires but the profession has other values, one of those lies in what we rather technocratically call continuous professional development. I would like to see teachers feeling that at every stage of their lives they are constantly in the process of learning, and learning in order to either pass on their knowledge, their wisdom, to the people they teach, or just to feel better about themselves as professionals. I think that is a very important part of making teachers feel special. I would like them to have a range of sabbaticals, both in terms of their frequency and their depth. To consciously make it unlike any other job, so that when people come to talk about what teachers do, what comprises a teacher's job, it includes a range of professional development opportunities which are unparalleled in any other area. To do this you have got to get around the ridiculous mythology of long holidays. The idea that teachers somehow work less hard than the rest of us is just not remotely true. In reality sabbaticals would , if well planned, help to connect teachers to a whole range of experiences beyond the classroom all of which could serve to refresh , reinvigorate, and recharge experienced teachers.

Question: Is there a problem of having sabbaticals when we have got such a teacher's shortage?

Lord Puttnam: First of all I think it's as dangerous to overstate as to understate the teacher shortage. There is a shortage, but there have been far worst shortages in my lifetime, on at least two occasions. Surely it's the best possible reason for turning it into a more attractive profession. I think it would be catastrophic to paralyse change, paralyse opportunity because of shortages - real or perceived. The obvious truth is, if you do succeed in making the job more attractive, it is the fastest, and surest route to dealing with any and every level of teacher shortage. You also begin to attract more and maybe even better qualified people into the profession. So the idea that you should put off improvements to C.P.D. whilst there is a shortage in recruitment is pretty irresponsible!

Question: You were talking earlier about teachers being expected to take on the role of social workers. With boys and girls increasingly behaving badly, with no respect for teachers, what can you do about this, this another reason behind low teacher morale? You have got children behaving badly, but their parents really don't seem to care.

Lord Puttnam: Well I think to an extent you've answered your own question. The issue is to essentially start placing responsibility back on the parents. The great tragedy isn't that my generation got so much wrong in the '60s, because there was a lot to fight for and a lot to improve and in some respects we did a brilliant job, certainly in terms of the assertion of individual and societal rights. The tragedy was, that no-one around was wise enough to constantly point out that for every right you want for yourself, you have to absorb some form of matching responsibility. So we find ourselves with a plethora of rights, but a reluctance to take on board a number of the responsibilities that come with them.

Question: How do you reinstate that?

Lord Puttnam: In that you have to start somewhere you might as well start in schools. You start off within the process of education, building a full understanding of what it is to be a citizen in terms of your rights and at the same time, a word that I've come to love, - co-evolutionary - that you have a "co-evolutionary" understanding of the responsibilities that come with them. Because at the end of the day, if you have any interest in history you'll know that 'rights' are very fragile. If you don't absorb the responsibilities that come with rights, you are likely to end up losing them.

Question: Do you think we should have parenting classes, parenting contracts?

Lord Puttnam: We do have Home/School contracts but they seem to me as much symbolic as real. I'll answer the question another way if I may. I'm very intrigued by the fact that the old apprenticeship indenture forms were actually agreed between the master and parent of the apprentice. The parent signed on behalf of the child, and the parent had responsibility to the master for the child's conduct just as the master to the parent for what the child learnt. I am not for one moment suggesting that we go back to that type of arrangement, but conceptually I think the idea that the parent has a broad responsibility for the entire process of childhood through to the point of full employability is a very interesting notion, we should probably be looking at it with rather more enthusiasm. It's also fair to say that many parents feel let down by their own and their children's experience of school. There is still ground to make up, but there is nothing more exciting than visiting a school where a clear partnership has been forged between the parents and the teachers. This is a rather circuitous way of answering what is actually a very complicated question.

Question: One thing we were talking about is the status of teachers, and you have been talking about sabbaticals, but how in society should we raise the status of teachers. How the rest of society regards teachers?

Lord Puttnam: There is no one answer. The Teaching Awards has made a small, but in its own way significant, move forward, because at least it allows people to realise that the work of teachers is well worth celebrating. One of the things I would like to see is for society to briefly focus on the alternative. If we don't raise the status of teachers, are we really likely to emerge as an, as it were, successful nation, in the 21st century. The rest of the world is not sitting around waiting for us, we had an undeservedly easy ride through the late 20th century, it is not going to be that way in the 21st. We have to really start earning our way in the world. We know we have to be a brain not a brawn economy, we know that it is going to be highly competitive out there, we know there are any number of people all over the world, from countries I can't even spell the names of, that are going to prove to be increasingly competitive. It doesn't seem to have fully come home to us in this country. We are being incredibly complacent about our relative academic and social underachievement.

Question: Are we slipping internationally do you think?

Lord Puttnam: Yes. Definitely. Someone will race forward with some table indicating that I'm only half right. But I'm here to tell you that, as I go round the world, there are definitely other countries emerging with a greater seriousness, a greater ambition for the future, and a far greater sense what the challenges are likely to be.

Question: Which countries should we be looking at for those role models?

Lord Putnam: I think the Scandinavian countries have started to invest really serious money in education. They seemed to have their priorities right in the '50s and '60s, they then seemed to lose their way in the '70s and '80s but I think they have come back pretty impressively in the '90s. If you look where Norway, Sweden and Denmark are placing the emphasis of their activity, they seem to have understood, just as we ought to understand, that they are not nations who are going to sustain themselves solely because of their oil, gas and other natural resources, they are nations who will retain their place in the future because their people will be well educated , flexible and smart. Very well motivated and highly socialised.

Question: There is an argument that says we should reward excellent teachers, but root out incompetent ones. How do we assess an incompetent teacher?

Lord Puttnam: I'd be bitterly disappointed if the G.T.C. gained a reputation for merely rooting out the few incompetent teachers. What's important is the way in which you address this whole issue. It upsets me that I never hear anyone talk about rewarding successful firemen and rooting out the incompetent ones, or rewarding successful policemen and rooting out the incompetent, or, until very recently, rewarding successful doctors and rooting out the incompetent. There are incompetent people in every walk of life, believe me, in the world that I know best, the film industry, there are unbelievably incompetent people. But they are not doing that much active day to day damage. I think the spectre of incompetent teachers haunts many reasonable people, rather like the spectre of incompetent doctors, the very concept hits you where it really hurts. A poor teacher can permanently damage the confidence of your child, just as God knows, the failure to detect your heart problem is life threatening. So it is a very emotive issue. Where I think Chris Woodhead made everything even more emotive was in, pretty well at random, promoting the figure of 15,000 (which he omitted to mention was a little under 3% of the teaching population). There is not a profession in the world, in any country, that doesn't have 3% less competent practitioners, maybe in some cases even incompetent. By claiming that there were 15,000 "incompetents" he knew, or should have known, that every parent in the land would believe one of those 15,000 might be teaching their child. And of course it creates a shockwave. The way his remarks were interpreted devastated the very best people in a really wonderful profession.

Question: How do you think history will treat Chris Woodhead's Ofsted reign?

Lord Puttnam: I think one of the things that must be quite salutary for him is the degree to which the water is already closing over him. I am sure we will be hearing more from him in the media, but what is fascinating is that Ofsted never fully embraced "Woodheadism". Ofsted was and should always have been the teacher's critical friend, an essentially neutral, evidence based organisation with, for the most part, a genuine understanding of classroom practice and the issues involved. One of the things I find most encouraging about Mike Tomlinsons's appointment, is the speed at which moderation, and common sense seem to have been re-established. I very much hope he will decide to stay through at least a couple of years of transition.

Question: We have talked about incompetent teachers, but teacher training, do you think there is room for improvement?

Lord Puttnam: Yes. But let me stress first of all that I am not an expert. What I do believe is that in order to attract the generation of teachers we are likely to need as a nation, we will require teacher training institutions that are not just good, but superb. And those institutions are only going to be superb if the people working in them, the mentors and trainers, are in themselves absolutely world class. I get no sense that we can claim to have reached that point. It would appear that teacher training is quite variable and has not yet fully adjusted to the needs of the 21st Century.

Question: What does it need to do?

Lord Puttnam: Raise it's game I think. Probably it needs to be better resourced and significantly more ambitious. One of the things that strikes me is that there is an unfortunate kind of acceptance that OK is acceptable. The truth is that OK is not good enough. Very good is acceptable, superb is what is we should be aiming for because the best in the world is what we will need. If we resource the training institutions properly, then I don't think being the very best in the world is a wholly unreasonable expectation of the people who teach our teachers. Why would we be willing to settle for less?

Question: You said earlier that teachers shouldn't be expected, that they don't expect to be millionaires. But what salary do you think a newly trained teacher, say in London, should be earning. Young, ambitious?

Lord Puttnam: I think a newly trained and ambitious teacher today ought to be able to look to a career which starts in the mid twenty thousand and ends up in the mid to high fifties. One of things that has interested me, looking around the table at the GTC, is first of all, that so many applications for advanced teacher status seem to come from women, who are very bright, very ambitious and in their late twenties and early thirties. If you are looking for the profile of your AST teacher of the future that seems at present to fit. An interesting proportion of those also seem to come from the ethnic minorities. which is wonderfully refreshing. What I find with those teachers, who for me represent the future, as what we hope it might be, is how little 'baggage' they carry. How much they want to get on with their job, to be very good at it, and part of something they can be proud of. Some of them will undoubtedly go into management, but many of them want to stay in the classroom. They are an inspiring group to be around and as I say, this lack of ideological and in many cases political baggage they come in with, is very refreshing. They just want to be superb professionals. I'm not sure you can't really ask for more.

Question: Just earlier you were talking about their being very good young teachers from ethnic minorities. Have we enough teachers from ethnic minorities or is the teaching profession a little too monochrome?

Lord Puttnam: Most importantly, there aren't enough male teachers. I have a personal obsession about getting more male, particularly black and Asian males, into primary schools, because of the extraordinarily high number of single parent households, many of which are principally reliant on the mother. I am very concerned that a generation of young males, particularly young black males are growing up with no male role model whatsoever. Not just at home, but also at school. That does worry me a great deal. Because I have no idea what the impact what the impact on that generation is likely to be. I enjoyed the opposite. I adored and admired my father, who came back from the war when I was five. To not have that, to not have the stabilising and sometimes even inspirational component that offers a child, bothers me more than I can say. So in answer to your question. Yes, more teachers from ethnic minorities, but most particularly I would like to see more really committed young black male teachers in primary schools.

Question: Part of your job is listening to teachers. What is their greatest concern at present?

Lord Puttnam: When we went around the country, this issue of continuous professional development came up time and time again. As did the whole issue of work/life balance. How could they do their job in such a way as to be of maximum value to their pupils. I think every teacher is smart enough to realise that distracted, frazzled and fraught is not a good frame of mind in which to be teaching kids. Your question is an interesting one, and the answer might surprise you. I think what upsets teachers most is their sense that, one way and another, they are not being allowed to do their job, as well as they believe possible. Because of the way in which their day and their week is pre-ordained they don't have enough time to think through their lesson plans. Not enough time to learn from each other, not enough time to work on their own skills. Not enough time to get to know the more difficult of their pupils better, or to properly differentiate between the smart and the less smart. Not enough time to be human beings in every sense of the word. Human beings as teachers to their pupils, and human beings for their families, their friends and themselves.

Question: Does that mean fewer classroom lessons?

Lord Puttnam: Less contact time almost certainly. More time to think, more time to prepare. Less classroom contact time will, in the end, make for better classroom practice.

Question: Final Question: More time to allow the children to get on with subjects and come back and discuss them in a certain university basis, or college basis?

Lord Puttnam: It goes right back to your first questions, about respect, and the role of the teacher; about how teachers are regarded in society. I think good teachers, in order to convey the qualities they believe themselves to have, need the time and opportunity to review and enhance their skills. That doesn't come with racing from pillar to post. As I've said I have come to really admire teachers, I have spent three and a half years going around talking to them, I am constantly awe-struck by what they achieve with the resources available to them. I have never been amongst any group of people who are so well meaning and committed and have such overwhelming sense of the importance of their responsibility to our children. I'd like to feel that if all the people I work with at the Department (and I'm very fond of most of them) had the same feeling towards teachers that the teachers have towards their pupils, then the entire education service would run differently, more harmoniously, more enthusiastically. Maybe one reason why teachers get so disillusioned is that they know how they feel about the young people they are responsible for. I have never said this before, but possibly teachers need to feel the same level of support that they know themselves to be offering. There might be a deep truth somewhere in all of this, because if you are pouring out commitment and affection and concern, willing kids to do well day in day out, why on earth shouldn't you be receiving something similar in return?