Schools restraining pupils as young as 4
Unruly student data shows average 13 kids forcibly controlled per day
Classrooms are being trashed and teachers and principals can do nothing about it. Whetu Cormick, Principals’ Federation president
Schools are using force to control escalating student “chaos” on average 13 times a day — in some cases with children as young as 4.
New rules requiring schools to file reports every time they physically restrain a child show that children were restrained 3309 times in the first 15 months after the rules came into force, an average of 13 times on every school day.
Special Education Principals’ Association president Judith Nel said unruly students were a tiny minority of New Zealand’s school student population, but the level of violence was on the rise.
A total 1695 individual students have been restrained since the rules took effect — about 0.2 per cent, or one in 500, of the country’s 809,000 school students.
“We need to address that population because really it’s a small number of children across the schooling sector that is creating this chaos,” she said.
But Nel, who needed 23 stitches in her head after a student pushed her into a doorway in 2016, said violence was increasing because of weaker parental control, poorly trained teachers, more students on the autistic spectrum and a push for large, noisy multi-teacher spaces.
“Children need different support structures when they get to school because at home they are not given guidelines the way we were,” she said.
“You also have the children and young people for example on the autistic spectrum, and the structures in schools are no longer in place that used to be there that could moderate such behaviours, particularly now that we have open classrooms, the new learning environments. For a young person on the spectrum, that is extremely challenging.”
Details provided under the Official Information Act show that the
country’s 37 special schools, which have only 0.5 per cent of all students, accounted for 22 per cent of the physical restraints reported in the 15 months to November.
Almost all other cases were in primary schools, with only 4 per cent in secondary schools where many students were too strong to be restrained.
About three-quarters involved children aged 5 to 10, spread evenly across each year of that age group. But two involved 4-year-olds.
Boys were 5.5 times more likely to be restrained than girls, and Ma¯ori were 1.4 times as likely to be restrained as European students. Pacific and Asian students were restrained at below-average rates.
Staff or students were injured in a third of the restraint incidents, but the Ministry of Education said: “Typically the reported injuries are physical and appear to be fairly minor (eg bruises and scratches).”
Two-thirds of the incidents involved students who already had individual behaviour plans, and just over two-thirds of the staff who restrained the children had been trained in how to restrain them safely.
Principals’ Federation president Whetu Cormick wants the law changed to let teachers restrain children when they threaten to smash windows or cause other property damage, not just when there is “serious and imminent risk” to a person which the current law requires.
“We have many stories where classrooms are being trashed and teachers and principals can do nothing about it,” he said.
Associate Education Minister Tracey Martin said she had asked the ministry to look into how the rules were being applied “because schools are highlighting they are unworkable in some circumstances and parents are saying schools are now suspending their children rather than using minimal restraint and working through other options”.
“We haven’t got the right balance,” she said. “A major problem is the rules around restraint have been poorly communicated . . . parents wanted to know when their child was being restrained, and its use [minimised].”