Source: Sidney Morning Herald

Let schools be drugfree

CONTROVERSY such as recently convulsed Castle Hill High School
should not happen again. At issue was the right of parents and
teachers at a State high school, in pursuance of a drugfree
policy, to expel children caught violating it. The Castle Hill High
School case ended unsatisfactorily. The school has agreed to
readmit two students, girls in Years 8 and 9, it had sought to
expel for dealing in marijuana. It has been overruled by the
Department of School Education, which has told the school it has no
power to make its own policies on exclusions.

This case has exposed a serious flaw in the policy of increasing
the involvement of students and parents in the running of State
schools. This broad policy has been widely welcomed and has begun
to produce great benefits to many schools. It has been dealt a
serious but not necessarily fatal blow in the Castle Hill High
School case. If, as in this case, teachers, students and parents
all agree on a strict antidrugs policy, why should they not be
allowed to enforce it? Does the result of this case mean that a
school which nowadays means teachers, pupils and parents will
never be able to exclude students for violating school rules, even
when the rules, though severe, are really no more than a reflection
of the law itself?

One good result of this otherwise unsatisfactory case is that the
school, in its determination to stand its ground, has pressed the
Department of School Education to reexamine its policies on drugs,
suspensions and expulsions. As a general rule, it would be
consistent with the new spirit of increasing schools' autonomy to
leave it open to individual schools to decide how lenient they will
be with breaches of discipline. Whatever else happens now, the
department must be perfectly open with all schools and must restate
with absolute clarity how much power schools have to make rules and
to enforce them.

It is all very well to insist that State schools unlike private
schools must accept responsibility for the education of every
child in the State, no matter how troubled the child is or how
damaging his or her influence is on other pupils. Of course, there
is provision for the removal from a State school of an especially
difficult child. But the perception remains strong that the State
must accept all students and that to expel a difficult child from
one school is to pass on a problem to another. This has worked
against allowing State schools the kind of freedom private schools
have to enforce rules which establish and maintain a safe, happy
and productive learning environment.

If a school teachers, children and parents decides to take a
firm line on drugs, it is simply not fair that this collective
decision should be undermined by misguided concern for children who
refuse to obey the rules of the school. It is wrong to assume that
a child expelled from one school, when obliged to transfer to
another, will necessarily continue to offend. There is such a thing
as mending one's ways and making a fresh start. The most
intractable cases, of course, will not be cured immediately by the
shock of expulsion and will not respond to the support and guidance
given to help them make a fresh start. But that has always been so.
In such cases, the department must accept responsibility more
readily through properly funded special schools. In general,
though, the way to make State schools happier and more sympathetic
learning environments for all pupils is to trust the new
combination of teachers, pupils and parents which now guides and
energises these schools.

THE recommendations of the Police Royal Commission were put
together as a coherent document for the rootandbranch reform of
the NSW Police Service. This is why the NSW Government and the
Police Commissioner, Mr Ryan, must be looking at implementing as
many of the recommendations as possible, as quickly as possible.
This argument for haste and comprehensiveness means that Mr Ryan's
insistence that 18yearolds are still needed as recruits, despite
a strong recommendation for older recruits, needs to be challenged.
If the problem relates, as Mr Ryan says it does, to a lack of older
recruits, then the recruiting procedures need to be made more
effective.

Justice Wood argued that the base age should be increased from 18
to 21 "to ensure recruits are more mature, have more experience in
dealing with a variety of people and in coping with crises and have
more confidence in their own decisions". What he was foreshadowing
in these comments and in the totality of his recommendations was a
highly skilled, smart, effective and efficient NSW Police Service
to match the changing nature of police work with its more acute
dangers and problems that have to be confronted. This is a paradigm
that undoubtedly matches the needs of a modern police service in
NSW.

While bettereducated and older recruits are needed, as well as
recruits whose backgrounds reflect the diversity of our society,
the education the recruits receive must also be improved on what
was provided in the past. Justice Wood was extremely critical of
the NSW Police Academy and rightly so. It was only two years ago,
in fact, that the Police Minister, Mr Whelan, revamped the board of
the Police Academy and gave it the task of restoring the ideals
defined by Justice Lusher in his 1981 report into the NSW Police
Service. Justice Lusher argued that an open and honest service
depended on an effective training system.

The academy generally failed this task until 1995, at least. There
were accusations then of a "climate of fear and distrust" among the
teaching staff and "an element of bastardisation within recruit
training". An institution such as a police service can rot at the
top and from the bottom. The "newlook" police service Mr Ryan is
trying to create, therefore, needs a Police Academy that graduates
officers who can work effectively in a smarter, honest and
efficient organisation.