Teaching union NASUWT called on the government yesterday to stop using unqualified staff in schools as a cheap alternative to teachers.

Tory rules allowing unqualified staff control of classrooms are responsible and must be reversed, the union said.

NASUWT carried out a survey of 7,000 teachers which found that 65 per cent felt that schools are increasingly using the measures to shrink costs.

Fifty-three per cent said they were working alongside unqualified staff who are regularly teaching and planning lessons and grading pupils. This number rose to 61 per cent in academies.

Representatives at the NASUWT’s annual conference in Birmingham denounced “the government’s attack on the professional status of teachers,” and called for the changes to be reversed.

NASUWT general secretary Chris Keates said: “Parents no longer have the certainty of knowing that when they send their children to school they will be taught by a qualified teacher.

“The decision to remove qualified teacher status had nothing to do with raising standards and everything to do with reducing costs, depressing teachers’ pay and feeding the free market.”

The news comes as a YouGov poll for the NUT revealed that 80 per cent of parents would not want their child to attend a school that did not require its teachers to have professional teaching qualifications.

“The parents with whom we’ve been speaking just assume every teacher in the school their child goes to is qualified,” said NUT general secretary Christine Blower

Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary Tristam Hunt said unqualified teachers were “damaging schools.”

He said: “Improving the education our children receive in our schools means continually improving the quality of teaching in the classroom. Labour would end David Cameron’s policy and ensure a qualified teacher in every classroom.”