VOTE: Tories to end excluded pupils' right of appeal

9:21am Tuesday 8th April 2008

Tory leader David Cameron pledged to do "what is necessary" to bring about an ordered environment in classrooms as he laid out plans to rid schools of persistent troublemakers.

Mr Cameron said he would end the right of pupils to appeal against exclusion from school for bad behaviour.

"I am absolutely clear, as a politician and as a parent, discipline is the thing I worry about most in schools - the fact that you can't even learn anything if you haven't got an ordered and quiet environment," he said.

The Conservative plans came as teacher surveys suggested that a third of teachers had been physically attacked and nearly one in five had been threatened with a weapon.

Mr Cameron said behaviour in classrooms was getting worse and yet the number of exclusions had gone down.

He promised to abolish the rules that impose a financial penalty on schools that expel a disruptive child - where they lose funding as they lose pupils.

"We'll make it easier to expel disruptive kids," he said. "We'll stop forcing schools to take in violent pupils who have been kicked out of another school."

John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, welcomed the focus on classroom discipline. But he said: "Ending the right of parents to appeal to an independent panel against exclusion would lead to more going to the courts to try to overturn the child's exclusion.

"Natural justice dictates that some appeal mechanism should be in place."