I think it is very hard if not impossible to rank universities by the standards of their teaching. I know my undergrad course was nowhere near as rigorous as it could have been, but that I got more out of it because I put more effort into it than most others. Equally, however, I am aware that my own style of learning fits well to being lectured at and to competitive essay writing. This is not true of many others, and adaptations in teaching methods have yet to filter through to most Humanities departments that I’m acquainted with.

So how well a university does can fluctuate year to year not on the basis of how good the teaching is, but how receptive each year’s intake of students are to that teaching.

We talk frequently about widening access to HE and FE courses, despite introducing Caps on places for the forthcoming year. It seems easier to target school leavers, investing time and money at this stage. Instead, I’d suggest efforts should be focused on the very early years. Once an attitude is set that education is not for you, then this is near impossible to break.

However, back to teacher training. My biggest complaint is that all parties talk of the number of teachers trained. However, this masks the reality that there is not enough funding to employ them all. This is very much the case in Scotland, where every party over recent years make such claims. Yet a newly qualified teacher is only guaranteed one year of employment after graduation. Local authorities rely on these part funded places, but cannot afford to retain them one year on. They are then replaced by yet another NQT.

I know plenty of students who study in the less prestigious Glamorgan University (who nevertheless specialise in several fields, as most newer unis do), and overall I feel the engagement their lecturers have with the course and the standard of teaching are actually better than at Cardiff University, where the main goal of most, if not all, employees is to attract research funding and to write plenty of academic papers, not to teach. The example set by staff is not one that any aspiring teacher would wish to emulate.

Dave is spot-on when he points out that suitability to a teaching role is not based on where you study, but a set of individual qualities that in many cases are not even learned in an academic setting. At secondary school, I had an utterly useless chemistry teacher who had studied at Oxford. I also had an excellent maths teacher who studied at Swansea University in its old guise as a University of Wales college. Standing of institution does not guarantee standards of graduates, especially in a career like teaching, where scholarly knowledge is only part of the skill-set required.

I find pretty abhorrent the notion that, simply because it’s new as a university, it can’t be ‘good’.

I think you are bang-on, Paul, as is Tom, in assuming that the overtly stated motives of Cameron are different than the real agenda, particularly his structural agenda in elevating some universities above others (particularly the Russell Group, which are key advocates of exploding the cap on tuition fees – the British Ivy League in waiting, as it were), and perhaps decreasing the number of teachers in secondary schools.

I also think the idea that one has to have a high-quality degree in order to be able to teach a given subject from 11-18 is quite the assumption. I admit, it can be the case that the skills and qualities needed to pass a degree often translate well to teaching. Commitment, patience, originality, intelligence and study skills, for example. But a) these are not the only skills one needs and b) a high-quality degree is not the only place these skills can be acquired.

There is certainly nothing in the standard BA, even from a red-brick university, that has application to teaching a subject from 11-18 that can’t be learned simply by having a keen mind and an interest in that particular subject. How I know this is simple: I didn’t take a Modern History degree, but I can teach Modern History and I haven’t had a boss yet who would dare question my subject knowledge.

Not to say that subject knowledge is not important; at A-Level particularly, it is important. But how you answer something at A-level and how you answer something at degree level are completely different. It’s relatively easy to master the former if you’ve had to master the latter – but again a) that’s not the only way to master the former and b) there’s nothing about graduating with a degree from a non-elite university that suggests you can’t master exam schemes.

Indeed c) there is nothing that proves that if you graduate with a degree from a red-brick university you can master them.

Measuring who may be, and who may not be, a good teacher is a subjective skill. You have university lecturers who are good at it and university teachers who are bad at it. The class I graduated with, particularly the history part, were (I’m generalizing) goons in terms of subject knowledge. Many of them have made excellent teachers. But since then, the university has tightened the process by where it accepts people.

That’s the key. It doesn’t require a new Quango. It doesn’t require favouring particular universities.

There’s another aspect to this; Labour has vastly increased the amount of teachers we have in schools since 97, something that was sparked when the big debate in the 1990s was about class sizes. Maybe this is Cameron’s way of cutting back teachers? Perhaps he reckons the public will be idiotic enough to accept bigger class sizes under the false auspices of improved quality?