Christine Gilbert, head of Ofsted, the schools watchdog, told The Guardian there was "strong" evidence to suggest a link between boredom in the classroom and low achievement.

Ms Gilbert said: "People divorce teaching from behaviour. I think they are really, really linked and I think students behave much better if the teaching is good, they are engaged in what they are doing and it's appropriate to them.

"Behaviour in our schools is generally very good. But there's what I would describe as low-level disruption where children are bored and not motivated, so they start to use their abilities for other ends. That then can lead to other children being distracted in lessons and so on."

She said improving schools through better management and head teachers was not enough to banish boredom from the classroom and schools would also need to improve the quality of teaching.

Reforms to the inspection process would amount to a "crackdown" on uninspiring teaching, with inspectors told to advise schools on why children are not paying attention in lessons, she said.

"One of the things that we've been concerned to do in the new inspection framework is to really emphasise the importance of teaching and learning.

"One of the things we really felt it was important to do is to give much clearer information about what schools should do."

However, teachers' leaders reacted angrily to the chief inspector's remarks. Chris Keates, the general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union, told the newspaper: "The fact is that every chief inspector seems to get infected with a virus that makes them say schools are full of teachers who aren't good enough despite the fact that their own evidence shows the standards of teaching is good.

"With comments like that, the chief inspector fuels the view that every lesson of every day for every minute has got to be packed with excitement. Quite frankly, life isn't like that and education isn't like that. Comments like this make teachers fair game for everyone, including pupils."