Department for Education revamps guidance on tackling bad behaviour
The Department for Education has published revised guidance on how teachers should deal with bad behaviour, including using a legal power to use reasonable force.
This power can be used to remove a pupil who is disrupting a lesson or to prevent a child leaving a classroom, the DfE said.
The Department added that the guidance, which has been reduced from 600 pages to 50, clarified that:
- Schools should not have a ‘no touch’ policy. “It is often necessary or desirable for a teacher to touch a child (e.g. dealing with accidents or teaching musical instruments)”
- Head teachers can search for an extended list of items “including alcohol, illegal drugs and stolen property”
- Head teachers have the power to discipline pupils who misbehave outside the school’s premises and outside school hours.
The Department said the guidance “unequivocally restores adult authority to the classroom”.
According to the DfE, nearly 1,000 children are suspended from school for abuse and assault every school day. It also claimed that persistent disruptive behaviour accounted for nearly a third of all permanent exclusions in secondary schools, while major assaults on staff had reached a five year high with 44 taken to hospital with serious injuries last year.
The government said it also wanted to protect teachers from malicious allegations. The guidance sets out that head teachers can temporarily or permanently exclude pupils who make false allegations. “In extreme circumstances they may even press criminal charges against the pupil,” the DfE said.
The Department said the default position should be to assume the teacher had behaved reasonably unless the complainant can show the teacher had behaved unreasonably.
Teachers should not automatically suspend teachers accused of using force unreasonably, it added. Malicious allegations should not be included in the teacher’s employment records either.
The revised guidance is intended to complement reforms contained in the Education Bill, which include a proposal to stop appeals panels sending excluded children back to the school from which they were excluded.
Education Secretary Michael Gove said: “Improving discipline is a big priority. Teachers can’t teach effectively and pupils can’t learn if schools can’t keep order. These changes will give teachers confidence that they can remove disruptive pupils and search children where necessary.”
The government has also appointed Charles Taylor, a headteacher in West London, as its expert adviser on behaviour.
The new guidance can be found here. The consultation closes on 30 May 2011
