TEACHING unions blasted Education Secretary Nicky Morgan yesterday after she said teachers should be more professional — despite the number of unqualified staff in classrooms rocketing under Tory rule.

Ms Morgan, who took over the schools brief from the controversial Michael Gove last month, announced she supported an extension of programmes to increase the quality of graduates taking up teaching.

“It is an issue,” she said in an interview for the Sunday Telegraph. “We want people to respect the professionalism of teachers.”

And the audacious MP also suggested the public disliked teachers as much as politicians.

“People respect their... children’s teachers,” she said. “If you ask people about MPs, they say ‘They are dreadful apart from mine’. I think it’s the same with teachers.”

The number of unqualified teachers increased by 2,300 after Mr Gove allowed free schools and academies to hire them.

It is unclear whether Ms Morgan was seeking to distance herself from her predecessor’s position or if she favours recruiting teachers from elite universities.

In 2010 then-junior education minister Nick Gibb said: “I would rather have a physics graduate from Oxbridge without a PGCE ... than a physics graduate from one of the rubbish universities with a PGCE.”

NUT general secretary Christine Blower said: “It is politicians not parents who continually criticise and undermine the teaching profession.

“‎Nicky Morgan can enhance the status of the profession by recognising that every child in every school has the right to be taught by a qualified teacher, removing the right of academies and free schools to employ unqualified teachers.”