Education Secretary Ruth Kelly has laid out 'zero tolerance' plans for schools to tackle disruptive pupils.

Mrs Kelly said that to ensure behaviourial standards were met in schools, clear boundaries had to be established and awareness raised of the consequences of crossing those boundaries amongst pupils and parents.

The policy will include; local authority reviews of schools that education watchdog, Ofsted, deemed to have unsatisfactory behaviour; the use of Parenting Orders; and new Foundation Partnerships to give schools access to support to remove disruptive pupils.

Around £220 million will be invested in developing the initiative per year, which will include an expansion of Pupil Referral Units and the provision of Learning Support Units, learning mentors and police officers, working under the Safer Schools Partnership. The aim is to have every secondary school included as part of a partnership to manage pupil behaviour by September 2007.

Speaking to an audience of headteachers in Blackpool, Mrs Kelly said that progress had been made in tackling bad behaviour in schools, with permanent exclusion reduced by a quarter since 1997. However, the Education Secretary said that more work still needed to be done. She said: "Good schools already have a strong school ethos and a policy on behaviour that's respected by the whole school community, because it's clear, consistent and rigorously applied. This approach must be in every school with any level of bad behaviour dealt with promptly and appropriately. Equally, pupils who lack respect for themselves, respect for their classmates, and respect for their teachers need to be made to take responsibility for their own actions."

Mrs Kelly also called for parents to support the new measures. She said: "Parents should not automatically assume, when their child is punished, that their child must be in the right and the school in the wrong. Where parents do not take responsibility for their child's unruly behaviour, then it is right that action is taken to ensure that they do, through Parenting Orders administered by the courts."

She added: "Every pupil and every teacher has the right to expect a safe, secure and orderly classroom, so that teaching and learning can flourish."

The Conservatives' Shadow Education Secretary Tim Collins criticised the government's plans. He said: "Labour's approach to school discipline has shown 'zero interest, not zero tolerance'. Labour are all talk on school discipline. Far from showing zero tolerance, they showed zero interest in order in the classroom until they saw that parents were being persuaded by the Conservative commitment to put discipline at the heart of our education strategy."

He added: "It is time for a wholly different approach. One which trusts head teachers; which puts power where it belongs, back to schools; which gives new legal protections to classroom teachers; which treats indiscipline as sufficiently serious an issue to require additional resources, not just more words."

The Conservatives policy includes the creation of a network of 'Turnaround Schools', backed by an expansion of CCTV, random drug-testing and metal detectors for schools that want them.

(KMcA/SP)