The baby monkeys had a choice: a “mother” made of wire with a feeding bottle, but who could not be easily “cuddled”; or a “mother” made of soft cloth who they could snuggle into, but who did not provide food. Watching which they chose - and monitoring the impact of that choice then and later - was US psychologist Harry Harlow.

What Harlow found in this experiment and others (including one in which the hours-old monkeys were given one of the two “mothers” only) was that the monkeys that could cuddle a soft cloth “mother” were more capable of managing their emotions, and grew into better adjusted adults than those that had access only to a wire mother figure. The latter group displayed increasingly dysfunctional behaviour from a young age.

Conducted in the 1950s, Harlow’s research attracted significant criticism. However, controversial though it was, it kick-started (along with other work at the time by the likes of John Bowlby, one of the pioneers of Attachment Theory) an exploration of the role of touch in the development of humans.

Subsequent studies in the intervening 60 years have delved ever deeper into the power of touch and we’re at a point now, according to Professor Francis McGlone, a lecturer in neuroscience at Liverpool John Moores University, where it can be said that touch is “as important for brain development as the oxygen we breathe”.

This makes things tricky for schools. High-profile safeguarding failures, where sexual abuse and inappropriate touching have been missed or ignored, have made touch a difficult topic in education. Despite guidance from the Department for Education advising schools to steer clear of “no-touch” policies, stating that “it is often necessary or desirable for a teacher to touch a child (eg, when dealing with accidents or teaching musical instruments)”, many teachers are still wary. Teaching unions advise staff to exercise caution in physical contact with students, and NEU teaching union joint general secretary Mary Bousted has warned teachers not to put themselves into “a dangerous position” in which a child could make an accusation of inappropriate conduct. Some schools voice similar concerns. And some teachers feel that it is simply safer to avoid touch altogether.

Yet if a lack of touch has negative consequences as serious as the research suggests, then is it time we rethought how we approach touch in schools?

McGlone has been studying touch for decades. He’s head of the Somatosensory and Affective Neuroscience Group at LJMU (bit.ly/SomatGroup) and has published widely on the topic. He explains that we now understand that the importance of touch comes down to the actions of our “C-tactile fibres”.

These are nerves in the skin that react to gentle touch, he explains, and send pleasant signals to the brain. But they offer more than simply a nice sensation; McGlone refers to the process as “life-giving touch”, with it being instrumental in the way a child develops a sense of self, and in regulating stress as they grow up.

“These nerves are perfectly evolved to respond to gentle touch and they have a fundamental role in the brain developing,” he says. “Brain development is impacted positively by physical contact and negatively by a lack of it. All the animal research shows this very clearly.”

McGlone is currently working on a study of peer-to-peer touch in schools, in which primary-aged children are being trained to stroke each others’ backs. Researchers will measure the levels of “stress hormone” cortisol in the children against a control group to see whether they are more resilient to the stress of Sats. McGlone predicts they will be “far more able to stand the stresses”.

This is all a relatively new science, he concedes, but he argues that the growing evidence base is “difficult to disagree with”.

Peter Andersen, emeritus professor at San Diego State University’s School of Communication, agrees. He has spent his career researching non-verbal and interpersonal interaction.

“We know now that, for most people, touch stimulates the parts of the brain that are associated with comfort and relaxation,” he says. “There are individual differences - I’ve studied people who I call touch-avoiders - and there’s a subset of the population who, either for biological reasons or how they were raised, are extremely touch-averse, and for them touch can be anxiety-producing.

“But human beings are generally very tactile creatures. Any relationship we have typically has an element of touch in it, and it is fundamental to the establishment of closeness, solidarity and friendship.”

Touch is not just important for managing stress, creating social networks, relationship-building and boosting resilience, though: academics have also suggested that positive physical touch can reduce existing violent behaviour. A 2002 study explored the impact of massage therapy on violent adolescents, who received 20-minute therapy sessions twice a week for five weeks. By the end of the study, they had lower anxiety and cortisol levels and improved moods, and went on to show more empathy and be rated as less aggressive by their parents, in comparison with a control group who received non-physical relaxation treatments and didn’t get such benefits.

And touch can be a key communication tool, too. In a 2006 study across the US and Spain, researchers found participants could decipher anger, fear, disgust, love, gratitude, and sympathy through touch alone, even when they didn’t see the touch take place.

In a pre-school classroom setting, this can reduce the need for verbal commands, researchers have found, helping to create an atmosphere of mutual understanding and attachment (bit.ly/TeacherCommand).

Work has also been done with older, school-age children. Carey Jewitt, director of the UCL Knowledge Lab, is currently leading the IN-TOUCH project, exploring how the digital world is reshaping touch and touch communication. She says that touch offers many opportunities for communication in a classroom setting.

“Touch can be really important around compliance,” she says. “If a doctor or a teacher just touches somebody gently on the forearm as they ask them to do something or is giving them information, research shows that that person is more likely to listen, and more likely to do what that person wants them to do.”

‘Negative touch’ experiences

Teachers could also benefit from becoming aware of how students use touch to communicate their emotional state, Jewitt continues. “A lot of people self-touch, like holding your face for no reason, or crossing your legs as a form of holding yourself. These can indicate discomfort or stress or upset, especially in children who are young and don’t have the language, and in teenagers who don’t like to talk about how they feel. A teacher having some awareness of that kind of selftouching behaviour - where someone is trying to soothe themselves or calm themselves down - could be really useful as a way of getting the emotional barometer of the room.”

But as Andersen states, touch is not always welcome or useful for every child. And there’s understandable concern around “negative” touch. This could be inappropriate contact between staff and pupils, but it can also happen between peers: a 2017 study from the NEU found that 24 per cent of students at mixed-sex schools had been subjected to unwanted physical touching of a sexual nature while on school premises.

Is it fear of being accused of negative touch, and a wider suspicion in society of touch as a result of high-profile safeguarding breaches, that lead many teachers to avoid touch as much as possible? It is unlikely the evidence for positive touch would outweigh their fears.

This is certainly the view of Heather Piper, emeritus professor of education at Manchester Metropolitan University, who has researched allegations of sexual misconduct in schools. She says “moral panics” have led to the proliferation of no-touch approaches. She argues this is part of a wider trend of pulling back from closeness between teachers and students.

“As soon as you start looking at issues of touch, you see that it’s not just about touch,” she says. “It’s about any number of behaviours that were once thought normal but are now thought suspicious, like giving a child a lift home from the bus stop, sending text messages about a sports event, and so on. People are behaving this way because of knowledge and fear of false allegations. It’s always easy to incite fear, and it’s very difficult to get rid of it once it’s there. But we won’t stop bad things happening by scaring good people.”

There are simple steps that schools could take to address these issues, Piper says. For example, rather than immediately suspending a teacher pending investigation (as currently happens), the teacher could be placed on to other duties to protect children while a discussion takes place and a professional opinion is formed, taking all the relevant factors into consideration.

“My background is in child protection and I’m no apologist for abuse or abusers,” she says. “I know abuse is dreadful. Nonetheless, justice is paramount, and I’ve spoken to many former professionals whose lives have been ruined, following what I am convinced were false allegations.”

But many feel this goes deeper than simple mechanisms for dealing with accusations. In some schools, touch is an accepted part of the culture, leadership on it is robust and training and guidance is plentiful. In many others, however, a lack of these things makes touch impossible.

Primary teacher Andy West has experienced this first-hand. He has worked in numerous schools and wrote about touch for Tes online earlier this year. In the article, he described a group of eight-year-olds trying to hug him in the playground at lunchtime (bit.ly/WestTouch).

“My reaction is to helicopter - lift my arms out by my side and put my hands in the air,” he wrote. “I look around to try and meet the eyes of other teachers, particularly female teachers. I want it to be seen that I’m not touching the children that are clinging to me.”

He received a mixed response to the article, he explains. Many people got in touch to say they shared his experiences and frustrations, while others said it was the responsibility of male teachers to lead the change. But West argues that individual teachers cannot be the change-makers without school support.

“You need the leadership to be supportive and on your side and trusting,” he says. “You can’t just rely on strong individuals to create a culture change. Strong individuals are important, but you need institutional backing, too.

“We need some sense of differentiation here. It’s not that every adult is intrinsically unsafe; people who do unsafe things are unsafe. Safe adults have a lot to offer but often don’t for fear of being seen as unsafe.”

He says there are some schools where he would feel comfortable touching a child on the shoulder, for example, and others where he absolutely wouldn’t, even after working there for years.

How to give a ‘school hug’

Those schools who do take a proactive approach to touch say it can be managed safely. Brundall Primary School in Norfolk has a policy that states: “We may choose to hold children for a variety of reasons, but in general terms we would normally do so for either comfort or reward.”

The policy explains how to give a “school hug” (sideways on, with the adult putting their hands on the child’s shoulders) and encourages positive hand-holding (not as a restraint), while lap-sitting and front-on hugging are discouraged.

It goes on to say that staff do not have to touch children, and should be aware that not all children will want to be touched. It also advises them to report incidents of non-recommended touch to a senior member of staff to “protect” themselves.

Head Rick Stuart-Sheppard says that the policy was shaped by Team Teach training (bit.ly/TeachTeam) - which focuses on de-escalation and promoting positive relationships - and the 2015 Guidance for Safer Working Practice for Those Working with Children and Young People in Education Settings (bit.ly/SaferGuide). Both are clear, he explains, about the benefits of touch in the right culture and within the right guidelines.

All new staff are given an induction to the policy and are encouraged to discuss any issues to ensure that they are comfortable, he continues, although it’s “not possible to be specific about the appropriateness of each physical contact, because for one pupil in one circumstance it could be perfectly appropriate, but for another it wouldn’t be”.

Stuart-Sheppard suspects, however, that a no-touch policy would actually be far more challenging for staff to negotiate.

“How would you enforce that?” he says. “There are some times in the life of a school, and the life of children, when you have to make physical contact. It’s about professional judgement; that’s the key part of the policy. We have to respect that people who have been working with children over a period of time have built up professional expertise and can use that in making a judgement.”

He acknowledges the need to be aware of children who could have experienced trauma and negative touch, and may be anxious about contact or, conversely, be excessively affectionate. “You’ve got to be sensitive to each child. In those situations, that’s when we would start asking if we know what’s going on at home. Again, it’s about showing awareness and communicating with staff. We might have some information about that child that’s confidential, that we didn’t know we would need to share until that moment.”

It is important, though, not to always assume that someone who has experienced negative touch will not want positive touch. Cheryl Rainfield is a young-adult novelist who has written several books based on her experiences of abuse and bullying. She says the safe touch of her teachers was vital in her development.

“I had kind, compassionate teachers who knew I’d been abused, and all of them gave me safe touch,” she told The Atlantic. “It’s part of what kept me from killing myself. I desperately craved safe touch. I was starved of it on a deep soul level. I was never touched except when I was being abused, raped and tortured, so to get it from these teachers in a safe way - a touch on the arm, a rub on my head, a hug - met such a deep need to be treated with kindness, love, warmth and humanity, and it helped offset some of the abuse, torture, and cruelty.

“When I hear people saying that children shouldn’t be touched in school situations, it makes me sad, and it worries me. If a child doesn’t have any safe touch in their lives, it’s easy to get disconnected from people and life, and to not want to live at all, and a compassionate teacher may be the only safety and caring a child has in their life.”

These thoughts are echoed by Laura Steckley, a senior lecturer at the University of Strathclyde, based in its School of Social Work and Social Policy and the Centre of Excellence for Looked After Children in Scotland. Her research includes exploration of the impact of trauma on children’s development, including on their perception of touch and physical interaction.

“It isn’t straightforward,” she says. “For some children and young people who have experienced transgressive touch, or who’ve had a lack of positive touch at all, what touch will mean to them and how they will experience it may be different than the intention of the teacher.

“But that isn’t a reason not to do it. It requires consideration and care; sometimes we might need to talk about it. Something like: ‘You really shrank away when I touched your arm there. I wonder if it didn’t feel reassuring to you the way I hoped it would.’ The sad reality is that some children have significant, unmet touch-related needs. They need the experience of - and not just instruction about - positive touch.”

Clearly, then, the use of touch requires a detailed knowledge of the children in your care, and a good relationship with them. That is not always easy.

Ollie Ward teaches at The Key Education Centre in Gosport, Hampshire - which serves students who have been excluded from school or are unable to access mainstream schools due to illness. He says that without the understanding of the child, touch can be very difficult to get right.

“I’ve seen it not work because someone has chosen the wrong moment,” he says. “You need to be so aware and attuned to that young person and what their triggers are.”

But, he continues, the best practitioners build up an implicit understanding of how to use it well, enabling pupils to feel a powerful sense of closeness and connection. He gives the example of shadow boxing with a group of boys in a PE lesson, where one was pretending to punch him on the arm and making gentle contact.

“It was nice for him to feel safe enough to do that for me,” he says. “You get to a point where that it isn’t an issue and it’s just part of the relationship.

“But there are certain young people here who are so traumatised and have issues about personal space that you wouldn’t even dream of doing that sort of thing.”

Where children have special educational needs that may mean understanding touch is problematic, caution is also needed, says Lucy Hall, a senior leader for inclusion and safeguarding at Swiss Cottage School Development and Research Centre in London, a special school that caters for students from the age of 2 through to 19, with a wide variety of needs. Touch can be essential for these students in terms of communication and feeling safe, but appropriate touch - to them and from them - can be complex to teach.

It’s “a really delicate balance”, she concedes. Many of the students are very vulnerable and need to be guided through issues of safety, consent and appropriate touch, as they learn how to navigate relationships with adults while entering adolescence. Holding the hand of a teaching assistant may feel natural for an older child, but it could cause tension, and so needs to be curtailed, she says.

“Staff who are new to us and are still developing their skills can fall into those patterns,” she says. “Sometimes you have to go back and ask, how helpful is that to that child? And what is that child learning? But then that same child might need a comforting arm around the shoulder the next day because they’ve had a hard morning, and that is fine. It’s about knowing the children well and doing what helps them to be independent and safe.”

Not simple, but not dismissable

Necessarily, the topic of touch in schools is not a simple one, then. Yes, the research tells us how positive touch can - and should - be, but translating that into practice is difficult.

The concept of touch is, unfortunately, tangled up with the huge societal questions we are reckoning with in the wake of Operation Yewtree, the MeToo movement and countless other revelations, such as those about the Catholic Church and the Rochdale grooming ring. It’s also bound up in other issues faced by schools: in the midst of crises in funding, workload and recruitment, ensuring that teachers have the time and space to form trusting, meaningful relationships with pupils, which positive touch requires, can be a challenge in itself.

But McGlone says we have to take the first step together: an acknowledgement that touch is “honest and normal” interaction and that - although there are “still more unknowns than knowns” about the long-term impacts of the neurological systems at work - its absence unquestionably has negative effects on development and emotional regulation.

“We need to get a grip on the risk assessment,” he says. “There is inappropriate touch, clearly, but you don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water. The evidence of the science needs to be laid on the table; this is the harm you’re causing. I think the risk is infinitessimal compared to the damage that can be done by litigating against it.”

Zofia Niemtus is a freelance writer

Further reading

* Piper, H, Smith, H. “‘Touch’ in educational and child care settings: dilemmas and responses’, bit.ly/PiperTouch

* Own, P. “Please touch the children: appropriate touch in the primary classroom”, bit.ly/OwenTouch

* Croy, I, Sehlstedt, I, Backlund Wasling, H, Ackerley, R, Oluasson, H. “Gentle touch perception: From early childhood to adolescence”, Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, bit.ly/CroyTouch