As sixth-formers across the country wait for the A-level results on which so many futures depend, Lord Mandelson has added to their anxiety with proposals that the best universities offer places to disadvantaged pupils with lower grades than others. From a Rothschild villa in Corfu, his concern is to promote social mobility by making universities admit lower achievers and then bring them up to standard through access courses or extra teaching.

Mandelson’s scheme is the latest high-profile admission of the collapse of teaching in English schools, where entry standards for teachers are now among the lowest in western Europe. Even the Government’s Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA) admits that 40 per cent of trainee undergraduate primary teachers do not have A levels.

The TDA was responding to a new study by Politeia showing that entry standards for teachers here are pitched far lower than in other European countries. Teacher education institutions, which set entry standards, may ask for two A levels, but it is clear from the TDA that they don’t insist on them.

Officially all that is needed to become a teacher is GCSE maths and English, grade C (and a science since 2007) and a degree — any degree, including one in education. The upshot is that even the 60 per cent who do have A levels are not obliged to pass in the subjects they will teach at school, much less to study them for their degree. The contrast with similar European countries could not be starker. Aspirant teachers in the countries analysed in the study must have A-level equivalent in a range of subjects followed by intense subject study to degree level. High standards are seen as necessary so teachers can educate and inspire.

Here the reverse is the rule. The low entry standard signals that the profession is officially seen as for the less able, a low-status job for low- level applicants. The expectation is self-fulfilling. Able graduates go instead to professions where their ability and success as academic achievers is recognised. Teaching, once a proud profession, no longer evokes respect. Rather this vocation, to which many of the most able and committed once aspired, is disappearing, hurried on its way by the misguided policies of the state.

For, added to the low standard for entry is the bureaucratic intrusion in training and the classroom and with it the message that teaching is a low- status profession. The TDA trawls for trainees helped by glossy-magazine- style adverts; institutions are paid to admit, see through and qualify entrants for the classroom, irrespective of how educated they are, or how well suited they might be to teach. Once in the schoolroom the teacher is victim of an over-managed system: officials determine the lessons given and tests set; and Whitehall’s priorities for every school are sent to every head, every day, every week —in a manner that would do the old Soviet Union proud. England’s teachers suffer the highest levels of state interference: lessons and assessment by official directive.

Professional judgment is a thing of the past. Able teachers are driven out by the conditions of work. Our drop-out rate is the highest of similar countries, our teachers the unhappiest. Even the centralised models, such as France and Germany, leave teachers free to exercise professional judgment, which makes for a happier profession.

Would raising entry standards at least to those of comparable European countries help to improve matters? Or would, as one union threatened some time ago, a GCSE Grade B in maths mean that applications to the profession collapse? Probably more terrifying for the Government than bad teachers is the prospect of no teachers. Yet far from threatening the supply of teachers, higher and tougher entry standards bring greater competition for places. In France five candidates compete for each job. Here the highest entry levels set for medical school go along with the most sought after university places.

Not only can and should standards be raised, but so should salaries for able graduates. Our salaries are at the lower end of the scale compared with other countries; and those who stay in the profession after mid-career can only look forward to low final salaries. To pay the able, we should freeze non-teaching education jobs in central and local government and the quangos. Abler, happier teachers will do far more to promote social mobility than a thousand Mandelsonian schemes. Indeed the First Secretary of State might recall how the teaching he had at Hendon County Grammar got him into Oxford, and not a special “access” scheme. So, set schools and teachers free of the officialdom; freeze bureaucratic posts and use the funds to pay higher salaries.

Sheila Lawlor is the director of Politeia

The British and American university experience, Helen Rumbelow, Times2

Times Recommends

• How to stop the Queen picking the next PM
• To save the planet, strike a deal with Big Oil
• Bankers think it’s all over. Time to think again