There was also support for primary schools to have the same 23.5-hour weekly class contact time laid down in secondaries and for the union to mount a legal challenge against any attempt by individual councils to alter conditions of employment.

* Delegates unanimously decided to launch a campaign to place disruptive pupils in `isolation units’. Pat O’Donnell, a South Lanarkshire primary teacher, said that only pupils who consistently refuse to comply with school discipline would be transferred to the units.

John Kelly declared in his presidential address that the NAS `will defend with the utmost vigour the professional integrity of a teacher who, having exhausted all of the support mechanisms available, declines to accept the propostion that pupil X can be accommodated without compromising the safety of others in the school building.

Mr Kelly called on education authorities to take the same positive attitude towards resourcing the education of problem pupils as they did towards the needs of the physically disabled.