A third of secondary schools may be failing to safeguard students’ human rights due to their policies on restraint, a report warns.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission published a report today that calls for data on the use of restraint in schools to be published nationally.

Background: Inquiry into schools’ use of restraint

Behaviour: DfE may call for less pupil restraint in all schools

Quick read: Pupils ‘hurt every day’ by school restraint methods

The report says that, of 641 schools surveyed, 84 per cent had a policy that requires all incidents of restraint to be recorded - while 71 per cent had a policy that also covered the analysis of those incidents.

“This dropped to 63 per cent for mainstream secondary schools,” says the report, Restraint in schools inquiry: using meaningful data to protect children’s rights.

It adds that: “If schools are not analysing their use of restraint, they cannot have the necessary human rights safeguards in place, as set out in our human rights framework for restraint.”

Secondary schools ‘not analysing their use of restraint’

The data suggests that more than a third of secondary schools are not analysing their use of restraint.

The report says that restraint data from schools should be collected, published and analysed. It refers to the Timpson Review on exclusions and how this made use of national exclusion data, whereas there is no comparative national data on pupils being restrained or their protected characteristics.

Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders’ union the NAHT, said: “NAHT welcomes EHRC’s recommendation that the UK and Welsh governments should publish nationally agreed definitions of the different types of restraint, and that national training standards and guidance should be developed, tailored by school phase and type.

“All teachers and school leaders want to minimise the use of any form of restraint, but for too long government has failed to provide the necessary tools, training and guidance that schools need to approach and manage restraint more confidently and effectively.

“Clear nationally agreed definitions, mandatory recording and national guidance must be accompanied by full funding to deliver appropriate training for school staff according to their phase and school type, and to pay for the internal systems needed to establish effective recording systems.”

The report says: “We found schools dealing with issues surrounding restraint on a daily basis, often with little to no guidance. While teachers are generally doing their best, they need far greater help to understand what constitutes restraint, what they should record and what could be analysed.”

The report also raised concerns that:

• If data on restraint is not collected or analysed, schools risk not meeting their legal requirements under the Public Sector Equality Duty. “This duty requires schools to consider how to eliminate unlawful discrimination and promote equality of opportunity for all pupils,” the report says.
• Six per cent of schools surveyed did not have a restraint policy. And a quarter of 270 families who had self-selected for the survey said their child’s school had not informed them about the type of restraint that could be used before their child was restrained.
• Nearly four in 10 schools (38 per cent) agreed that better guidance about what a restraint policy should look like would help them approach restraint with more confidence.
• “Almost half of schools in England and Wales (47 per cent) agreed that nationally agreed standards for training would help them approach restraint more confidently,” the report says.
• The Department for Education has been contacted for comment.