Violent parents 'more of a risk than pupils' to schools

Parents are becoming more violent and ill-behaved towards teachers although their children's conduct continues to improve, the leader of the country's largest headteachers' organisation declared yesterday.

David Hart, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, told his union's annual conference in York: "As pupil behaviour starts to improve, parental behaviour deteriorates. The Government still has no answer to the impact of violent parents on school communities.''

Delegates at the conference also warned that "frivolous'' litigation claims against schools by parents were costing the education service millions of pounds a year.

Mr Hart said his union would launch a campaign for the right to exclude children if their parents threatened to be violent against staff or fought in front of the pupils. His move follows a case at Southfield Primary School in Ealing, west London, where a head excluded six children from two families after their parents had fought in the playground. He said there was a threat to staff health and safety. The school's governing body eventually forced the head to take back the pupils.

"Telling heads they have no right to exclude when the parents have no intention of maintaining the semblance of a decent relationship with the school is not the answer to heads who have real concerns and real responsibilities for the health and safety of school communities,'' Mr Hart said.

One head at the conference, who wanted to remain anonymous, told how he had two letters from warring parents in his study, promising they would not start fighting again if they were allowed back on the school premises.

Mr Hart said the effects of the Government's £450m campaign to improve school behaviour – by cracking down on truancy and setting up more pupil referral units (sin bins) for disruptive pupils – was beginning to pay dividends.

He argued now was the time to spend more money and effort on tackling disruptive parents. Powers existed to order them to attend good parenting classes and jail them for condoning truancy. "Heads might be more impressed if the existing criminal law was enforced with more vigour by local authorities and police.

"Failure by local education authorities and chief constables to use the full range of sanctions available to them only serves to undermine the authority of heads.''

He said the association would also be pressing for an amendment to the Government's Antisocial Behaviour Bill to exclude pupils "if the relationship between the school and the parents has irretrievably broken down'' and arrange for the child to be given a "fresh start'' in a new school.

The conference unanimously backed a motion warning of the "headlong rush'' towards litigation by parents.

One headteacher, Mike Millman of the Priory School in Dudley, West Midlands, told of a child who had slipped in school because he was wearing inappropriate shoes. "Half an hour later my director of education had a telephone call from a legal service," he added.