Opposition MPs have backed claims by a leading union that ministers interfere too much in the day-to-day running of schools.

Sheila Dainton of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers said that ministers should have "better things to do" and has today been backed by MPs.

Shadow education secretary Damian Green backed her comments made in an interview with ePolitix.com.

"Sheila Dainton is absolutely right. This government continues to demoralise teachers with massive levels of interference. We will never raise standards in the classroom until we respect the professionalism of teachers," he said.

Phil Willis, the Liberal Democrat education spokesman, claimed a raft of legislation had failed to help teachers.

"The government is in danger of creating a sense of initiative paralysis in our schools with its paranoia over control," he said.

"Last year's Education Act 2002 was heralded as the flagship for the reform of secondary education yet it now lies in tatters on the Dfes shelf.

"The much vaunted plans to allow schools autonomy have also failed to excite simply because schools did not want the extra bureaucracy that surrounded the autonomy initiative."

He backed Dainton's charge that Whitehall was too involved in the classroom.

In the interview, the education policy adviser for the union called for ministers to cut intrusion into what frontline staff do.

"My feeling is that it interferes far too much. In fact it has happened over the past decade or so. We've seen a creeping centralisation of the way in which government directly interferes with what, in the view of the ATL, should be the traditional role of the teacher," she said.

"The government is there to govern. It shouldn't get involved in the day-to-day business of what goes on in the classroom: how lessons are taught, what is taught and so on and so forth. I would have thought that ministers have better things to do than tell teachers how to teach.

"What concerns us is that they are becoming increasingly involved in the day-to-day running of the classroom. Basically it's not their business."

Dainton also argued that British pupils face too many tests during their school career, after a report by the ATL found that 16 and 17-year-olds felt they had too much homework and too many tests to be able to do other things.

"We have the most tested students in the country. It affects them all - right the way from the very young children of five years old right up to the 16 and 17 year-olds," she said.

"For those who don't do so well early on in their school lives these tests are very demotivating.

"They feel totally disappointed if they don't get the right level. They can be left with the impression that they are absolute non-starters, even when they are so young.

"This is not what we should be saying to our young people. And so for all the children concerned, they are over-tested to the point where many of them are under considerable amounts of stress."