TEACHERS have the right to refuse to teach violent and disruptive pupils, the Court of Appeal confirmed this week. The judgment followed a High Court ruling in April that union members were participating in a valid trade dispute by refusing to teach an allegedly troublesom 16-year-old boy from Bonus Pastor School in Lewisham, south London. Lawyers for the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers argued that there was no diminution in the boy’s education because he had one-to-one teaching from supply teachers.