Finian McGrath (Dublin North Central, Independent)
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Question 280: To ask the Minister for Education and Science the position regarding action plans to deal with violent and disruptive pupils in schools; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [16698/05]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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The Deputy will be 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 terms of reference of the task force are: to examine the issue of disruptive student behaviour as it impacts upon teaching and learning; to consider the effectiveness of strategies at present employed to address it; to advise on existing best practice, both nationally and internationally, in fostering positive student behaviour in schools and classrooms; and to make recommendations on how best to promote an improved climate for teaching and learning in classroom and schools.

I want the work of this task force to provide a solid foundation for developing policies and best practice in our schools into the future. The task force will link closely to a wide range of interests across our education system on this very important issue. A consultative group is part of the process, comprising all the partners in education and allowing for their input to the deliberations of the task force.

In addition, I have asked that the task force should constitute fora of teachers, parents and students with a view to testing emerging ideas and proposals. The task force invited, by public advertisement, submissions from interested individuals and groups. I have asked it to let me have an interim report by June 2005 and to complete its work by the end of 2005.

My Department has provided guidelines to boards of management to assist them in discharging their obligations in the area of school discipline. The 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.

Social attitudes and parental approaches to discipline vary from one school community to another, and it would be impractical and even undesirable for the Minister or her Department to set out a formal and detailed code of behaviour for all schools.

Section 23 of the Education Welfare Act 2000 requires all schools to have in place a code of behaviour specifying: (a) the standards of behaviour that shall be observed by each student attending the school; (b) the measures that may be taken when a student fails or refuses to observe those standards; (c) the procedures to be followed before a student may be suspended or expelled from the school concerned; (d) the grounds for removing a suspension imposed on a student; and (e) 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 that the child will comply with the code.