Gove: We Must Tackle 'Education Underclass'

The Education Secretary has pledged to address an "educational underclass" in the UK by targeting behaviour and discipline in the classroom.

Michael Gove has delivered a speech at an academy school in south London, focusing on troubled youngsters in light of the recent riots.

"For all the advances we have made and are making in education, we still every year allow thousands more children to join an educational underclass," he said.

"They are the lost souls our schools system has failed. These are young people who in that underclass go into gangs, young offenders institutions and prison.

"These are young people who whatever they material circumstances that surround them, grow up in the most dire poverty. The poverty of ambition, a povery of discipline, a poverty of soul.

"I recognise that using a word like underclass has potentially controversial connotations. It can seem to divide society into 'them and us' but I believe there is a merit in plain speaking."

Mr Gove also announced that the Government would overhaul the rules on physical contact in schools, adding: "It is right to intervene physically to maintain order or comfort a child in distress."

Meanwhile ministers have been accused of "dismantling state education" and putting children's futures at risk by the new head of a teaching union.

Alice Robinson of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) said the Government was not supporting disadvantaged pupils.

She has raised concerns about children who do not fit with the "Government's vision of conveyer-belt education with targets, tests, and compulsory subjects".

Ms Robinson's comments also come as school pupils in England prepare to return after the summer holidays.

"The Government seems hell-bent on returning to Victorian times when those in education were taught a narrow and rigid curriculum and troublesome children disappeared out of sight," she said.

"Bit by bit the Government is dismantling state education and all the safeguards in place to support and protect disadvantaged children.

"What will happen to children who are practical learners or less academic and could succeed in creative or vocational subjects, but who will flounder if they are forced to follow the English Baccalaureate to the letter?

"Do we really want to send a message to these children that they don't matter?

"Many children need extra support and attention throughout their childhoods if they are to stand any chance of staying in education and having rewarding careers.

"It still remains the case that for far too many young people the prospect of a university education or any type of career is akin to climbing Everest."

Teenagers achieve the EBacc if they score at least C grades at GCSE in English, maths, science, a foreign language and either history or geography.

Free Schools, a policy championed by Mr Gove, will be funded by the taxpayer but will not be controlled by local authorities.