Olwyn Enright (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)
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Question 255: To ask the Minister for Education and Science the guidelines which are issued to schools in regard to discipline; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [9589/05]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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My Department has provided guidelines to boards of management to assist them in discharging their obligations in the area of school discipline. These guidelines, which issued in 1991, were drawn up following consultation with representatives of management, teachers and parents, and are sufficiently flexible to allow each school authority to adapt them to suit the particular needs of the school.

Each board of management is responsible for formulating, in consultation with parents, a fair and efficient code of behaviour. This code should ensure that the individuality of each child is accommodated while acknowledging the right of each child to education in a relatively disruption-free environment. The code should also include provision for dealing with serious breaches of discipline and continuously disruptive pupils.

The guidelines state that codes of behaviour should be considered in the context of the school being a community in which mutual respect, co-operation and natural justice are integral features. A code should have regard for the rights and responsibilities of all parties concerned, including management, teachers, pupils and parents. Circumstances vary from school to school and those intimately involved are best placed to draw up an appropriate code for that school.

The guidelines recognise that poor behaviour can stem from a range of causes, some of them external to the school, some arising from the home environment and some from emotional or physical problems. It is important to identify problems as early as possible. Good parent-teacher and home-school links are vital in this context. The guidelines stipulate that parents should be encouraged to visit the school to familiarise themselves with the environment, to discuss their children's progress and, when necessary, aspects of their behaviour in a spirit of mutual co-operation.

In addressing the issue of sanctions for unacceptable behaviour, each school should devise a graded system of sanctions, containing a degree of flexibility to take account of individual circumstances. Schools must ensure that the rules of natural justice apply. Pupils and, when necessary, parents, should be advised of the nature of any complaint and be given an opportunity to respond. Parents should also be informed of their right of appeal to the next level of authority.

There are several strategies which may be used to show disapproval of misbehaviour, such as reprimand, temporary separation from peers, loss of privileges, detention, additional homework, referral to principal or communication with parents. Only after every other effort has failed should suspension or expulsion be considered.

I refer the Deputy to section 23 of the Education (Welfare) Act 2000 which requires all schools to have in place a code of behaviour. The code must specify the standards of behaviour that shall be observed by each student attending the school; the measures that may be taken when a student fails or refuses to observe those standards; the procedures to be followed before a student may be suspended or expelled from the school concerned; the grounds for removing a suspension imposed on a student; and the procedures to be followed relating to notification of a child's absence from school.

The school principal is required, before registering a child in the school, to provide the child's parents with a copy of the code of behaviour and may, as a condition of registering the child, require his or her parents to confirm in writing that the code is acceptable to them and that they will make all reasonable efforts to ensure the child will comply with the code.

The Deputy is aware that I recently established a task force to consider and report on the issue of student behaviour in second level schools. The task force is chaired by Dr. Maeve Martin of the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. The work of this task force will provide a solid foundation for developing policies and best practice in our schools into the future. It will link closely to a wide range of interests across our education system on this important issue.