Cameron in school discipline call

David Cameron addresses staff at a distribution centre in Sittingbourne, Kent

12 April 2012

Rules need to be changed to enable teachers to instil discipline, order and good value in Britain's schools, Tory leader David Cameron has said.

Red tape needs to be abandoned to allow teachers to be free from the constraints hampering their ability to stop pupils misbehaving, he added.

Mr Cameron said "home-school contracts" should be signed by both children and parents giving assurances of acceptable behaviour in classrooms. He spoke about school discipline during a question and answer session with workers at a Morrisons supermarket distribution centre in Sittingbourne, Kent.

One worker, a father to a nine-year-old boy, said increases in knife crime had made Britain a less safe country than when he grew up in the 1970s and 1980s.

Mr Cameron said there was "no magic wand" but that in many cases the start of when youngsters fall on to the wrong side of the law stems from home or at school. He dismissed a suggestion to bring back the cane, but said that headteachers should be granted more power to help keep order in their schools.

Standing on a platform with his shirt sleeves rolled up, Mr Cameron said: "The headteacher should have absolute discretion over excluding pupils who are behaving badly. Right now a headteacher can exclude a child who behaves appallingly and the appeals panel can put that kid straight back into school.

"It undermines the school, it undermines the authority of the headteacher and I think we have got to have proper discipline in school, including, if the headteacher wants it, a contract which the kids have to sign and the parents have to sign, saying this is the behaviour that we will all sign up to if we all to go school.

"I think that would make a difference, and we have to get rid of all the red tape and the bureaucracy that stops teachers from disciplining kids.

"It's a rule today that you can't even set a detention on the same day as they do something wrong in school, you can't search kids for DSs or mobiles. I think that's wrong as well.

"Change the rules to make it easier for teachers to instil discipline and order and good value in our schools."