Block on violent parents

WENDY BERLINER

Education Correspondent

Schools should be allowed to ban pupils whose parents attack staff or threaten violence even if the child has done nothing to warrant exclusion, Britain's biggest head teachers' organisation says today.

Head teachers fed up of being attacked by parents who object to them disciplining their children ask the Government today why they should be expected to educate the children of abusive parents.

Last year, 69 members of the National Association of Head Teachers were assaulted or violently abused. Twelve have claims before the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board.

The NAHT also says it should be allowed to refuse to take in violent pupils excluded from other schools or to reinstate violent or disruptive pupils of their own unless there is a favourable report on them and the school feels it can cope.

The NAHT makes its points in a response to a government review of rules on the management of disruptive and violent pupils by schools.

The heads are complaining that the review does not include the activities of violent parents or the problems of schools forced to admit pupils who have disrupted other schools.

The issue of thuggish and dangerous behaviour in schools has been given fresh prominence and urgency by the death of Philip Lawrence , the London head teacher stabbed when he went to the aid of one of his pupils .

The association claims in its submission to the Government that the problem is rapidly reaching "nightmare proportions" as the system for dealing with excluded pupils breaks down. Schools are being forced by their local education authorities to admit teenage "thugs" whose needs could not be met in mainstream schools.

Problems are compounded when local appeal committees overturn school governors' decisions to exclude pupils, the association says.

The NAHT is calling for appeal committees to be chaired by someone legally qualified.