press release
Refrain or be restrained
17 July 2007
On 1 April 2007 the school discipline chapter
of the Education and Inspection Act 2006 came into force,
implementing many of the recommendations of the Steer Group on
School Behaviour and Discipline. On 11 April 2007, the Government
issued non-statutory guidance on how to use the potentially wide
new powers to discipline pupils.
The Government has been keen to trumpet these new powers, saying
that they redress the balance between teacher and pupil. However,
some argue that these new provisions are unnecessary and will
achieve little. School discipline has long been a key aspect of
good school management and teachers have been far from powerless in
their efforts to preserve discipline, Dai Durbridge, education
expert at law firm Browne Jacobson, points out. However, the
Government has been keen to be seen to provide up-to-date
legislation.
One point needs to be made clear; the new powers are not a
return to corporal punishment. Staff cannot use force as a
punishment. Instead, the use of force is allowed to stop a
pupil:
- Committing an offence
- Injuring himself or another
- Damaging property
- Prejudicing the maintenance of good order and discipline at the
school
In truth, most of this is not new. Staff at schools have long
had the power to use reasonable force to prevent offending, injury
or damage to property. The truly novel aspect to the new powers is
the right to use force to maintain "good order and discipline". It
is couched in broad terms and this leaves ample room for
differences of opinion on whether force would be justified in any
given circumstance.
Let us assume that a teacher decides to confiscate a pupil's
mobile phone in the classroom after a pupil continually distracts
others with texts, calls and games during a lesson, thereby
'prejudicing the maintenance of good order and discipline at the
school'. Under the Act, can the teacher use force to confiscate the
phone? If so, how much force should be used? What if the pupil were
to refuse to hand over the phone? Is further force justified?
Before these powers can be invoked, school staff will arguably
need clearer guidance as there is currently little practical
guidance on how and when these powers could and should be used.
Without such clarification, school staff may consider relying on
these new powers to be a high risk strategy.
Against this background, it remains to be seen to what extent
teachers do now use force simply to maintain good order in the
classroom. As ever, it is probable that case law will be required
to explore the practical meaning of these legislative
developments.
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