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Last updated 11:11, Saturday, 22 November 2008

The latest statistics which revealed the number of three- to five-year-olds suspended for attacking pupils or adults produced the usual “ shock horror” reactions from all quarters.

The figures revealed that 120 three-year-olds had been suspended for assaulting other pupils, that 300 four-year-olds were suspended for the same offence and that 580 five-year-olds had suffered the same fate.

The number of suspensions for violence towards adults was 140 in respect of three-year-olds, 420 for four-year-olds and 890 for five-year-olds.

All this means that about 2,450 of our youngest schoolchildren spent time languishing at home rather than learning at school because they behaved in a totally unacceptable manner.

Of course this is a small proportion of the relevant pupil population. But this statistic is absolutely no cause for complacency or for government inaction. Firstly, because the number of highly unruly youngsters is on the increase. Secondly, because the use of suspensions by head teachers demonstrates that school staffs have been deprived of the power to take immediate effective action to deal with these very young children.

Nobody in their right mind is going to suggest a return to corporal punishment, but the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction.

Understandable concern about child abuse has nevertheless led to draconian sanctions against school staff deemed to have overstepped the mark and technically assaulted pupils. They have been subjected to the full rigour of children’s services/social services/police investigation. Even if they are cleared they will have suffered severe stress and their careers could be damaged.

Is it any wonder that many school staff will not touch a child for fear of retribution?

The irony is that it is often the very parents, who are responsible for bringing up their children so badly, who are the first to cry foul if they think that their children are being mistreated. So heads are placed in an impossible position, knowing that they have to ensure that the Government’s guidance on restraint of pupils is enforced, yet sympathetic to the position of a member of staff who has either been assaulted or who has to deal with a child who has attacked a fellow pupil.

The net result is that the staff naturally play safe, rather than risk their careers, and heads suspend the pupils, thereby removing the problem on a temporary basis.

The Government seems content with this position because it stated that the rise in suspensions meant that its policies were working and heads were using the sanctions available to them.

Yet the Government seems blissfully unaware of the fact that it is their own guidance on restraint that is contributing to the problem.

It is too restrictive and too negative on the crucial issue of the need for school staff to use reasonable force to restrain and deal with violent, abusive and foul mouthed young children who need to be ‘brought up short’. Suspending children of three, four or five does not necessarily solve the problem. Too often it only serves to postpone a solution to behaviour that needs to be ‘nipped in the bud’.

Some people argue that the Government’s failure to take a more robust line in support of hard-pressed school staff only serves to encourage the current litigious trend in which parents actively challenge decisions by head teachers, even when it is transparently obvious that they, and their children, are in the wrong.

If this is the case, and I see no reason to disagree, then the sooner the Government moves decisively, to swing the pendulum back in favour of the staff in our schools, the better.