12:00 pm
Sir Alan Steer: Yes. The search power came about when I chaired the practitioners group in 2005. One of our concerns was that the legal position of teachers was not as clear as everybody thought it was. It was based on case law going back to the 19th century. One of our recommendations was that the right of teachers to discipline pupils should be put into statute. You need to see things in that context. Under what became the 2006 right to discipline is the right to require children to empty their pockets and produce goods. What was rather more specific was the power—not a duty—to search against consent for items of a really serious nature. Weapons were the most obvious items and so went in first. In conducting this review, I came to the view that weapons are rarely found in schools. It is far more common to find stolen property or alcohol. If teachers did search for those items without consent, they had to be protected the following morning from a subsequent litigious parent or awkward family saying that they had exceeded their powers.
I would have been happy with a more general power, and I included that in my report, although I did highlight alcohol, drugs and stolen property. However, I was advised—and accepted that advice because it was not my decision—that there would be legal issues with a totally open right of search. I cannot comment on that. That was the advice which was, in a sense, subsequent to my report, which said that there ought to be search powers focused on those three items. I understand there would legal concerns and possible difficulties with totally open search powers.