Head teachers will have a mandate to call in the police if they find pupils - or their families - attacking children or staff on social media.

A draft of the long-awaited Education Bill, published last week and now subject to a seven-week public consultation, outlines tough measures to tackle ’inappropriate use of social media’.

Cyber-bullying and social media attacks involving schools and pupils have been a growing concern, highlighted by serious and tragic cases in the UK.

Among the ’reasonable steps’ available to a head teacher, under the new bill, would be ’drawing the use of social media to the attention of a police officer and inviting the officer to consider whether an offence has been committed’.

The guidance appears to be aimed at helping head teachers who have been struggling to establish the legal position on social media use.

The bill says intervention should take place when a head teacher is aware ’a pupil at the school is using social media in a way that causes or appears intended to cause distress or offence to another pupil at the school or to a teacher or other member of staff’.

Significantly, it extends to a ’relative or present or former associate of a pupil at the school’.

Other ’reasonable steps’ the bill would make available to the head teacher include applying school rules to ensure social media is not used during school hours, on school premises or on school equipment.

It also calls for education and guidance to be given to pupils about the potential harm and to apply specific guidance to perpetrators or potential victims, including reference to the ’civil and criminal remedies available’.

The bill covers the policy on when and how a teacher can search a pupil if they believe they have an offensive weapon.

The teacher must be authorised by the head teacher and rules include that pupils who identify as female can only be searched by a female teacher and those who identify as male can only be searched by a male teacher.

Under the bill, the DESC or a school governing body would be allowed to seek costs to cover the expense of repairing damage.

Rules permitting confiscation would allow a teacher to remove anything in a pupil’s possession if it has been misused or is something that is prohibited from the school.

A teacher could confiscate offensive weapons or items capable of being used as a weapon, controlled drugs, psychoactive substances or alcohol. Behaviour outside school premises is also covered, permitting teachers to apply the school behaviour rules off campus, whenever the ’teacher is responsible for the welfare or behaviour of the pupil in accordance with written rules of the school’.

That appears to be aimed at the likes of school trips or sporting events at different locations, rather than behaviour by unsupervised pupils near to but not actually in school premises.

Meanwhile, a civil rights campaigner has criticised other elements of the draft bill, including a section that introduces stronger controls on home learning, requiring parents to provide evidence of the educational provision their children are receiving.

Tristram Llewellyn Jones said: ’Ironically, whilst the bill proposes frankly draconian and intrusive registration and inspection of all private provision, the department’s own schools are let off with assessing themselves.’

â?¢ Concerns over draft bill - see letters page.