Estelle Morris this week announced a series of measures to tackle violence and disruptive behaviour in schools. With a 30 per cent fall in the number of exclusions over the past three years, she said the aim was “to move the agenda on to promoting the fundamentals of good behaviour”.
New powers are expected in the forthcoming Education Bill, which will allow schools to consider the impact of bad pupil behaviour on other pupils and staff as “a more prominent factor” in appeals against exclusions. An extensionof parenting orders would be used to make parents take responsibility for the behaviour of their children in school as well as on the streets.
And while Ms Morris said no innocent child would be excluded for the sins of their parents, she launched a consultation to look at ways of increasing support for schools to use existing legal sanctions against parents who are guilty of harassment, trespass, assault or public disorder.