If anyone in Whitehall is likely to play Mr Clean, it's Tony Blair. Those little annoyances, that for most of us go almost unnoticed, offend his sensibility making his eyes pop and that perma smile go a little awry, writes Zahra Borno.

Calling for a return to the old-fashioned moral values is a common theme embraced by politicians in a desperate bid to win the votes of old reactionaries who think things are not what they used to be.

Last year Blair fell into the same trap as the beleaguered John Major by issuing a rallying cry to the 'back to basics' banner.

Now the spotlight is being turned on the classroom.

The Education Secretary, David Blunkett, says he wants to restore old-fashioned values of politeness and respect in schools. He is particularly keen to stamp out swearing by children and wants to see a high standard of behaviour in the classroom and at home.

He told the annual conference of the National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers: "We need to reassert the old-fashioned values of politeness and respect, of acceptable behaviour and of intolerance of abusive and aggressive action.

"This will benefit the communities we live in as well as our schools. It may be in vain but let's have a go to try to eliminate foul and abusive language from our schools and our homes.

"For obscenity and foulness are the pre-requisites to thuggishness and brutality. Zero tolerance of foul language and swearing in school can make an enormous difference. We know it in our own families kids don't swear when you tell them not to." It may sound as if Mr Blunkett has swallowed a manual on how to run a Sunday School rather than a comprehensive, but his tough stance has been welcomed by teachers across the region, although they say there is little new in Mr Blunkett's crusade.

Secretary of the Oxfordshire branch of the National Union of Teachers Mark Forder says: "Politicians are always on the look out for the next headline and although a call to return to old-fashioned values will do that, I'm not sure what else it achieves.

"As far as I am concerned they never went out of fashion. The role of a teacher is far more than to simply cram a child's head full of facts.

"The whole ethos and aim of a school is to build up a sense of values that will be useful to them in the future.

"It is a place where the young people know and understand the values that the teachers stand for." Recent years have seen an explosion in the amount that swear words are used in the street, on the TV or in literature. Extensive use of swear words can indicate a limited and unimaginative vocabulary and a lack of self-expression. Without a doubt swearing has become more socially acceptable than ever before but Mr Forder says the use of bad language has always been discouraged in the classroom.

"A lot of young people use what we would call bad language as a matter of routine, mainly because they are used to hearing it on TV, in pop music or at home.

"In any supermarket you hear parents continually exposing their children to bad language not all parents set their children a good example.

"It inevitably means that children coming into schools use language that we didn't used to hear. But if I hear swearing in my classroom, then I draw attention to whatever we would consider to be inappropriate. I particularly emphasise language that is abusive to other children," he says.

Brenda Williams, a part-time teacher at Rose Hill First School, says: "We have to acknowledge that education is more than the delivery of knowledge and skills.

"It may sound a bit trite, but what we aim to do is help a child to become a nice, rounded person."