Pat Newman, president of the Tai Tokerau Principals' Association, said the current legislation needed to be changed urgently. (File photo)

The president of a school principals' association is calling for "common sense to prevail" after the Teachers Disciplinary Tribunal found a teacher guilty of misconduct for carrying a struggling child to the principal's office.

Pat Newman, president of the Tai Tokerau Principals' Association, said the current legislation gave the tribunal hardly any choice but to find the teacher guilty.

And the New Zealand Education Institute said teachers were seeing a "rise" in pupil misbehaviour which they needed more support to tackle.

In the 2016 incident, the teacher had intervened after the boy was accused of hurting four classmates.

The teacher told the student to go to the principal's office, but the student tried to walk away, then duck out of the teacher's grasp.

When the boy refused to cooperate and grabbed hold of a bar, the teacher prised his fingers free, grabbed him by the waist with both arms and carried him to the principal's office.

Under the legislation, teachers are permitted to restrain a child in the most minimal way possible, and only while the pupil is in the act that endangers themselves or another person.

The tribunal said it was a "borderline" case for serious misconduct, as the teacher's actions were not a "brief reaction", but rather "a sustained use of force".

The tribunal said the student was "clearly distressed" at the time, and the teacher's actions "added to this distress".

However, the tribunal said his actions did not constitute physical abuse.

It found the teacher not guilty of serious misconduct, but guilty of misconduct.

Newman said the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand (Educanz) had to act, but argued the decision effectively handed over the control of schools to difficult children.

"Unless a child is a danger to themselves or others, you can't do anything," he said.

The only option legally open to teachers was to tell children to stop their harmful behaviour, he said.

If the children continued to harm others, "we're only going to be able to suspend them, and then eventually, if they carry on, expel them".

Newman said the tribunal's hands were tied by the legislation, but said there was a degree of discretion members could have used in making the decision.

"Nobody should have to be censured, even though it's a smack with a wet bus ticket, for doing what is right, even though it's, in theory, not," he said.

"The whole thing is about common sense, and common sense hasn't been applied here.

"I don't think there is one parent in New Zealand that would call [the incident] assault. It's the law being an ass."

Lynda Stuart – the president of the New Zealand Education Institute union, which represents primary school teachers – said the teacher was "obviously" in a difficult situation.

It was not a stand-alone case, she said.

"There is a huge amount of challenging behaviour and complex learning needs that our teachers are facing on a daily basis and we are hearing and seeing that there is a rise in this."

She said the case highlighted the need for more support for teachers and principals having to deal with challenging behaviour and "increasingly violent" situations.

"We've actually been saying this for quite some time to the Ministry of Education ... our teachers need more support.

"We've had the new rules come out around physical restraints but there needs to be better back-up for those teachers and also there needs to more training that is more readily accessible."

She said the wait time to access the training around restraining children and dealing with challenging behaviours was too long, due to a lack of funding.

The tribunal has suppressed the names of both the school and the teacher to avoid identification of the student.

The teacher has since relocated to the United Kingdom and has no plans to return to teaching in New Zealand, the tribunal noted.