Teachers accused David Cameron of trying to control and destroy public education yesterday after he announced plans to introduce autocratic regional school commissioners.

The unit consisting of former academy heads would have the power to immediately change governing bodies, introduce new discipline procedures and even implement punishments for badly behaved students.

“The introduction of commissioners to oversee schools is an important admission that fragmenting the public education service, and attempting ‘control and command’ from Westminster, was a major mistake,” said National Union of Teachers deputy general secretary Kevin Courtney.

He added that “the coalition government should now restore the necessary powers to local authorities rather than embedding a halfway-house called regional commissioners — an untested and expensive bureaucratic solution.”

The union declared it had “little confidence” in the policy and demanded that “new available resources should go directly into children’s services.”