Take parents of unruly pupils to court, headteachers are urged

Parents of persistently disruptive pupils can and should be taken to court, where they will face fines of up to £1,000, head teachers were told yesterday.

Schools were urged by the Government to seek parenting orders which require parents to maintain certain standards, such as making sure their children do not stay up late, do not have access to alcohol at home and attend school regularly, on time and in the correct uniform. In addition, the order can insist parents attend guidance and counselling sessions to teach them how to bring up their children.

Any parent who breaches an order can be taken back to court and fined up to £1,000. Head teachers could already take parents to court, but figures released yesterday showed that while 2,048 orders had been issued for truancy and poor attendance so far, none had been granted for poor behaviour.

"For heads to have the power to take court action against parents whose children continue to behave badly, disrupt lessons and impact on other pupils is a vital step in the right direction," said the schools minister Vernon Coaker.

"I want to see more schools using parenting orders when home-school contracts (voluntary agreements between heads and parents which cover good behaviour) fail – it is time for parents to be held accountable for their child's behaviour."

Speaking at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers' conference in Manchester yesterday, the Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, said: "We have to make sure parents pull their weight on behaviour and discipline."

He added that until now heads may not have felt "sufficiently confident" to use the new legislation.

The Government's plea coincided with a new report from its behaviour "tsar", Sir Alan Steer, a former headteacher. The report urged schools to spell out to parents the disciplinary powers they held over their children.

"I recommend that schools make it clear and explicit in their behaviour policies that they have the power to use physical force as necessary on pupils, power to put pupils in detention outside normal school hours and power to search pupils for certain types of inappropriate items," he said. Teachers can already search for weapons, but from September they will also be able to search for items such as drugs.

"By spelling this out in the school behaviour policy, which the parents agrees to as part of the home-school contract, the school ensure that parents know that these powers exist and may be used on their child," Sir Alan said.

The report also said schools "need to be better informed of the existence of parenting orders and be given examples of hypothetical situations where they might be used to advantage".

Sir Alan's recommendations follow a survey by the ATL last weekend which showed that four out of 10 teachers had been subjected to physical aggression from pupils.

*A teachers' leader yesterday dismissed Conservative proposals to set up a network of independent "free" schools run by parents as "barking".

Mary Bousted, general secretary of the ATL, said: "The Tories will abolish all of the national curriculum for independent state schools and impose a more rigid curriculum on the rest. Where's the sense in that?"

She said the proposals could lead to faith groups setting up new schools preaching creationism, or to a lowered emphasis on literacy and numeracy.

Dr Bousted said more parental choice would mean wealthier parents with more resources would take advantage while "the weak go to the wall".

"No one is fit to be the custodian of the nation's children unless they seek first and foremost to even the odds produced by accident of birth," she added.