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Significant changes to the education system have taken place in the recent period. Academies and Free Schools, which have greater discretion over teachers’ terms and conditions, but report directly the Department of Education, now form nearly half of all secondary schools. New national curriculum orders, with a greater focus on subjects and knowledge have been launched, whilst at the same time schools have been given greater flexibility to develop more locally focussed provision. Teachers at Academies and Free Schools are now no longer required to have Qualified Teacher Status, and an ever increasing proportion of initial teacher training is being delivered via Schools Direct, a schools rather than university based, route into teaching. At the same time, OfSTED’s new inspection regime has been launched, with shorter inspection notices, and detailed expectations with regards to classroom teaching and assessment. Within all of this Education Secretary Michael Gove maintains that teachers are ‘society’s most valuable asset’, so what can we say about how the ways the teachers of the future are being developed?  Is the authority and autonomy of teachers being increased or diminished by current school reforms? What are the distinctive features of this generation of teachers? Are education reforms promoting or inhibiting innovation and risk taking within the classroom? What are the aims of the Coalition’s policy?