BBC NEWS | UK | Education | Tories demand pupil... -
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Published on: 4/15/2004
Last Visited: 4/15/2004
Tim Collins MPTim Collins wants an end to bad behaviour in schools
The Conservatives are promising to back teachers by smoothing the way for laws to strengthen classroom discipline.
Spokesman Tim Collins is expected to tell an education union conference that bad behaviour by parents and pupils should no longer be ignored.
His comments come as the NASUWT union, at its annual conference, is deploring increased violence against its members.
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In his speech to the conference, being held in Llandudno in north Wales, Tim Collins will say his party will ease the passage through Parliament of "sensible legislation designed to strengthen the ability of teachers to impose discipline in the classroom".
He says there should be "no more turning of a blind eye to the behaviour of the yobbish parents or thuggish pupils".
He takes issue with one remark which hit the headlines at the start of the conference - when the union's current president, Pat Lerew, blamed a rise in pupil aggression on the legacy of "devil take the hindmost" Thatcherism.
Better to look at the general "fashionable erosion of respect for all forms of authority" and the "demolition" of the traditional family unit, Mr Collins believes - the work of the political left, not the right, he says.
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Mr Collins agrees teachers should get anonymity.
He also says there should be "a clear strengthening of the presumption of innocence for teachers", especially if the only evidence against them is the uncorroborated allegation of a child.
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Mr Collins says this is not enough, especially in view of the "scandalous abuse of public money" - an estimated £200m - as schools meet legal challenges over matters which used to be thought of as unfortunate but no-one's fault.