Slovak education is currently undergoing a reform process aimed at achieving better quality in the education and learning outcomes of students. A decrease in the number of teachers, and applicants for teacher training programmes, as well as the drop in interest of the graduates to work at schools has been observed for some time. Regarding the recruitment of students for the teaching profession, recent years have been marked by a lower quality of applicants for teacher training programmes, a reduction in the number of applicants, and also by an incapacity to select from a pool of prospective students. This paper presents a system of professional teacher training designed to align the content and practical pedagogical components, which are based on a complex matrix of teacher competences. The teacher's competence profile is based on the pupil's competency profile and it focuses on three core competence groupings: the professional development of the teacher, the development of the pupil's personality, and the educational process. The competences are currently the subject of the APVV-14-0446 project "Assessment of Teacher Competences," which examines the possibilities of creating a system of assessment criteria for teachers' performance and its application.