DISRUPTIVE and sometimes violent pupils are a curse that teachers increasingly face.

The spiralling numbers of expulsions - 12,500 from secondary schools alone last year - are testimony to that, as are the growing number of instances in which teachers have threatened to strike to get classroom trouble-makers dealt with.

But was not part of the problem the fact that pupils were only too well aware that, if they did cause trouble, teachers could not lay a finger on them?

It is debatable whether society or teachers themselves would welcome a return to the era of corporal punishment in schools.

But if, then, that is apparently a step too far, it does seem that the education-minded Labour government is trying to apply some common sense and help for teachers in giving its blessing today to teachers using "reasonable force" against unruly pupils.

It really does not amount to much, but the new guidance will allow teachers to touch, hold, push, pull, lead away a pupil by the arm or shepherd one by placing a hand in the centre of the back.

Yet, minimal though this "force" is, perhaps it is the accompanying knowledge that teachers are no longer totally powerless that will prove the most constructive element of this departure as it disabuses the disruptive pupils of their belief that they can get away with bad behaviour.

Whatever help it is to teachers, it is better than the nothing they had before and some protection against them being hauled to court or disciplined for doing only what plain common sense would allow in any case.

They should at least welcome it for that.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.