Law lords rule that teachers can refuse to teach violent pupils

Teachers won an important legal victory yesterday when the law lords ruled that they had the right to refuse to teach violent pupils.

The House of Lords rejected the appeals of two teenage boys who had been expelled from different comprehensives but were later reinstated.

Members of the two teaching unions – the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers – successfully argued in the High Court and Court of Appeal that their action was a legitimate part of a trade dispute. Neither of the youths, known as Pupil P and Pupil L, can be named for legal reasons.

Pupil P was expelled from a south London comprehensive in 2000 for violent and abusive behaviour. The law lords were unanimous in ruling that the teachers' threat of industrial action after the headteacher instructed them to teach the boy was legitimate. A dispute over what workers were obliged to do was concerned with their terms and conditions of employment and therefore amounted to a genuine trade dispute.

Pupil L, represented by Cherie Booth QC, the Prime Minister's wife, was expelled from a Hertfordshire school in 2001 for his involvement in a gang attack on a boy.

Ms Booth argued that Pupil L had been subject to "humiliating and degrading" treatment when he was taught in strict isolation after being returned to the school on appeal. The law lords decided, by 3-2, that Pupil L had been properly reinstated even though he was taught on his own.