Jonathan Jones

A victory for common sense

For years, teachers have been increasingly reluctant to restrain unruly pupils — for fear of being slapped with a lawsuit. But now, it seems, the government is trying to ease those concerns. Its guidance today may not change any laws, but it does encourage schools to change their approach. Among the directions is that “schools should not have a ‘no touch’ policy”: teachers can use reasonable force to restrain pupils, remove disruptive children from the classroom or prevent them from leaving the classroom when they shouldn’t. However, the guidance does stress that there are limits on the use of force, making it clear that “it is always unlawful to use force as a punishment,” and specifically banning certain restraint techniques — including the “nose distraction technique” which involves a sharp upward jab under the nose”.

This is essentially a call for a return to common sense — and a welcome one at that. The level of violent behaviour in English schools is deeply worrying. To give you some idea, here’s a graph of the number of exclusions and their causes, including 88,120 for physical assualt:

What’s more, figures produced by schools minister Nick Gibb in November showed that 251 teachers were violently injured in the last school year, including 44 who had to be taken to hospital. In a 2008 survey, 48 per cent of teachers said that the standard of behaviour in their school had deteriorated over the last five years, compared to just 26 per cent who thought it had improved. In the same survey, more than two-thirds said that “negative pupil behaviour is driving teachers out of the profession”.

The guidance also aims to help protect teachers from false allegations of wrongdoing. It states that “schools should not automatically suspend teachers accused of using force unreasonably,” and that head teachers can exclude pupils who make malicious false allegations. This comes after 28 per cent of teachers claimed that a false allegation had been made against them by a pupil and 17 per cent said such an allegation had been made by a pupil’s family member.

It’s easy to focus on Michael Gove’s wider agenda — free schools and academies — but these smaller interventions could play a crucial role. If more graduates are to be attracted towards teaching, then teaching simply needs to become more attractive.

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