Parents 'collude in teacher abuse'

Youngsters who are allowed to stay up late watching TV in their rooms come into school too tired to work or behave properly, the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) was told.

Delegates at the union's annual conference in Bournemouth passed a series of motions warning of a rising tide of violence and disruption in the classroom.

The union demanded better specialist units outside mainstream schools to teach the most disruptive children with "serious behavioural disorders".

David Gray, a delegate from Devon, said: "More and more parents, rather than punishing pupils for swearing at staff, are colluding with them."

Teachers have come to expect that parents will constantly refer to their "rights" and their children's rights when schools discipline pupils for bad behaviour, he said.

And they fail to discipline their own children or set traditional rules at home. "This lack of discipline at home is leading to a growing number of pupils, and especially girls, intimidating their teachers with sexist taunts.

"Boys don't just try to peer down young women teachers' fronts, they make comments on what they see," he said. If a young male teacher is single, he is labelled as having "something wrong with him". Mr Gray added: "This is a horrible form of bullying. This is the meltdown of society's civilised values."

Clarissa Williams, head of Tolworth Girls' School in Surbiton, said many disruptive children simply feel school has nothing to offer them. "They rage, they rage against the machine which is education, something they perceive is done to them and of which they are not part," she said.

The union passed a motion from Mrs Williams which called for more specialist facilities for teaching the children with serious behavioural disorders.