Heads seek right to bar children of violent parents

Headteachers are demanding the right to exclude pupils whose parents have attacked or abused school staff.

The National Association of Head Teachers will urge the Government to give them new powers to exclude children of violent parents.

David Hart, general secretary of the union, said a survey showed nine out of 10 teachers felt that bullying parents were now a bigger threat to school discipline and harmony than "thuggish pupils''.

Monica Galt, headteacher of King's Road primary school in Trafford, Greater Manchester, told the union's conference in Torquay yesterday: "There should be no hiding place for parents who undermine the discipline of pupils in schools and zero tolerance of those parents whose behaviour towards staff is abusive and aggressive. Some parents need the pressure of sanctions. The only successful solution in some cases is the exclusion of their children from the school."

Mr Hart added that he was "all in favour" of a change in the law to allow heads to bar children for the behaviour of their parents. Ministers are consulting on a number of measures to improve discipline – including guidance on how and when schools should exclude pupils. On Thursday, David Miliband, the new minister for School Standards, told the conference the Government was "100 per cent unequivocally behind heads'' in their attempts to enforce discipline.

Mr Hart said: "If the relationship between the school and the parent has fundamentally broken down, I really don't see that schools should be under an obligation to educate their child or children.

"To be fair to the Government, they are trying to pull all this together and bring forward a package to bring these parents to heel," he said. "If only local education authorities and if only the police would act on intimidation and threats of violence, then we would be a long way down the road of solving this problem.

"Some local authorities are good, some are appalling. Some police forces are good, some are indifferent. If only they would all act, we might not have to go to the extreme of excluding a child because of the behaviour of their parents."

Mr Hart said he had been contacted by two primary school headteachers in the past week, one in south London and the other in Lancashire, who were under attack from aggressive parents.

"In the Lancashire case, it was a single parent with a criminal record including a prison sentence who had been guilty of abuse and threats of violence," he said. He added that the local education authority had failed to take out an injunction against the parent and that the police "had been really quite slow in taking statements from the staff".

He warned that some aspects of the crackdown on poor parenting – such as threatening to dock child benefits if their children played truant from school – had not been thought through. "What happens when one child is truanting regularly but their brother or sister is perfectly well behaved?" he asked. "What evidence is there that it will actually change patterns of behaviour?"

Parents' leaders also attacked the plan for parenting orders, under which parents can be ordered to accompany their children to school every day and risk being fined or jailed if they fail to do so. The National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations said it was concerned the proposals might backfire.

David Butler, the organisation's director, added: "One of the dangers of introducing parental fines and prison sentences is the potential harm to children with the parent having less money for food and clothes or the children being placed in care. The result may even be lower school attendance and further violence and crime."