Victorian school principals will soon have the power to suspend or expel students for their behaviour outside school, in a move that has been described as “putting more pressure” on overworked educators.
The state education minister, Ben Carroll, on Wednesday announced the expanded authority for principals to use when “harmful behaviour” outside school and online puts other students and staff “at serious risk”. It will come into effect from term three.
Carroll told reporters it was a “commonsense change” that principals and parents had long been calling for and would bring the state into line with New South Wales and South Australia.
“Poor behaviour has consequences, whether it’s inside the classroom or out,” Carroll said.
“I’ve sat down with parents, with principals and indeed with students, where inappropriate behaviour has occurred outside the school gate and it’s been very difficult for the perpetrator to be expelled or suspended.”
The president and executive director of the Australian Secondary Principals’ Association (Aspa), Andy Mison, said he supported the intent of the announcement but held concerns educators only discovered the news in the media.
“It would have been nice for Victorian principals to have had a bit of a heads up,” he said. “This is a well-intentioned policy, but its implementation could be strengthened by consulting with principals about it before it was announced.
“If you want effective schools policy, it makes sense to involve those that have to implement that school policy.”
Mison added that suspension and expulsion should only be used as “absolutely last resort measures” with the aim being to support children to learn at their best.
“This is an acknowledgment that there are issues outside the school gate and that schools shouldn’t be responsible for managing all of those things,” he said.
“It takes a village to raise a child. We just can’t keep putting more and more pressure, expectation and accountability on schools to solve all the problems of society.
Lecturer in early childhood at RMIT, Dr Elise Waghorn, said while the new powers would receive significant support, “prevention is better than the cure”.
She said greater emphasis should be given on educating parents and young people about unsafe behaviours and online safety, instead of “constantly putting more pressure on teachers”.
“Principals or teachers shouldn’t feel they are put in a position to expel children based on their online activity. It’s not enough to just expel children – there needs to be education,” Waghorn said.
“We need to give a really clear message that it’s not the school or the parents in isolation, we need to … prevent this behaviour as a community.”
Carroll said harmful behaviour could include anything from physical assault to bullying to the distribution of “deepfakes”, where real images of a person are run through artificial intelligence to generate sexually explicit material.
The use of artificial intelligence to create pornographic deepfakes of fellow school students has been the subject of multiple police investigations in recent months, raising alarm among federal crossbenchers.
It comes amid growing concern over the behaviour of young people, with a recent survey finding instances of physical violence towards principals had increased by 82% since reporting began in 2011, while threats of violence were also at their highest rate in the same period.
Last month, the federal government launched a review into bullying and cyberbullying at schools, with the aim of developing a nationally consistent response to the issue.
The eSafety Commissioner is also in the process of drafting an industry code designed to protect children from age-inappropriate content, including pornography, high-impact violence and material relating to self-harm, suicide and disordered eating.
“We want to encourage kids to be coming to school hungry, to learn, not fearful or worried about what might have occurred over the weekend or indeed, overnight online, and how that will affect the school environment,” Carroll said.
