Teachers and Children

[olddutch]

Under the law Is a teacher allowed to grab hold of a pupil in school if the child attempts to run away from the the teacher when the teacher has told him not to run away. Is there a legal offence committed by the teacher in this circumstance, and , if so, what is the legal offence and what are the legal penalties that attach ??

[Gok Wan]

Possibly it depends on the circumstances? I mean, if the kid was likely to leg it out of the gates and try and run 5 miles home then I would hope that the teacher would grab him (or her).

Do you have more info?

[Bewlay Bros]

In short No.

Providing the "grabbing" was reasonable. If such force was used to prevent the child running away and not paramount to torture or using unnecessary force (i.e hand cuffs etc) then no problem.

When parents leave their children in care, custody or charge of ANYBODY, let alone teachers, then they would surely expect the above law to be adhered to. And as the parents have a legal obligation for their children to be in full time eductaion, and the children are of course legally there, then no charge of false imprisionment can ever be brought.

Do not confuse this with smacking etc.

[suse17]

not knowing full circumstances but my child was only small and didnt at the time like school so tried to run back down the road home luckily for me and her at the time the teacher did haul her back into school where i thought she was and she was safe.when i went to go and pick her up the teacher was terrified that i would think that she done wrong because as she explained to me then if she had stepped foot outside the school gates she would have been powerless to do anything about it and my child would have been in a lot more danger of being on her own and busy roads at the time i was shocked that the red tape involved in all this was realy unnessacary and thanked her and gave all of the teachers permission to get her back if she ever did anything like this again .needless to say it didnt i think most of the time teachers are faced with lots of situations where thay are more frightened of the parentents reaction and feel that thier jobs could be put on the line for something as silly as just making sure a child is safe hope this helps

[clairegg]

personally i wouldnt look at it is a legal offence, or look at penalising the teacher for this, the teacher has clearly told him not to run away, he /she has either done this for your childs own good, if the teacher gabbed your child, lets say if he was being bullied to remove him fom a situation or pushed him out of the way of a swinging door, you would be appreciative, school life is about disciplin and following rules and boundries and he broke them.