by Unity

I believe that I’m about to make a bit of nuisance of myself for reasons that I’m happy to share with you even if it means disclosing a bit of personal information along the way.

I’ve got two kids, the oldest of which turns 18 in a couple of months. He currently attends the 6th form of a local state school, where he’s currently studying for 3 A Levels.

This morning, I received a letter from the school, produced jointly with the local Plods, that, after a bit of boiler plate waffle about the government’s Tackling Knives Action Plan and why knive are serious issue, dropped out the following bombshell:

West Midlands Police continue to support our educational establishments and we will be conducting random anti-knife searches at undisclosed times in partnership with [name of school]. I would like to stress that there are no reported issues regarding knives within the [school], but like us, the [school] feels that young people need to be aware of the potential dangers of carrying a knife. In order to implement this incentive (sic) it is my duty to inform parents/guardian’s (sic) that during summer term West Midlands Police and [name of school] will be implementing random searches with students as a condition of entry into the building in accordance with current legislation.

Aside from noting the typically abysmal grammar – a grocers’ apostrophe and the desciption of random body searches as an ‘incentive’ rather than an ‘initiative’ – it seems the one of the major dangers here is that of having your civil liberties infringed on the basis of a bullshit argument that fundamentally misrepresents the legal authority of the Police and, especially, the school and its Headteacher.

So far, I’ve shot a quick email off to the school asking them to clarify exactly which piece of legislation they’re attempting to rely on here, but only because I want to make them squirm before delivering the coup de grace. I’ve already done my research here and unless the local Plods are planning to designate the school under the infamous section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 – and trust me, you’ll be the first to know if they try that crap on – then the relevant legislation here is section 242 of the Apprencticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009, which amends the Education Act 1996 as follows:

242 Power of members of staff to search pupils for prohibited items: England (1) After section 550A of the Education Act 1996 (c. 56) insert— “Powers to search pupils 550ZA Power of members of staff to search pupils for prohibited items: England (1) This section applies where a member of staff of a school in England— (a) has reasonable grounds for suspecting that a pupil at the school may have a prohibited item with him or her or in his or her possessions; and (b) falls within section 550ZB(1).

For the sake of completeness Section 500ZB(1) simply delinaeates which members of staff have the legal power to carry out a search, which is either the Headteacher or someone acting on the Head’s authority all of which is fairly irrelevant. What does matter here are the words ‘has reasonable grounds for suspecting’, which clearly indicate that the powers granted to Headteachers by the extent do not extend to authorising random body searches on students.

That being the case, and unless something snuck through the wash-up to alter this situation, this new initiative is going to happen. Not only does it constitute a breach of civil liberties and, of course, HRA/ECHR but the Headteacher’s decision to implement random body searches is clearly ultra vires and vastly exceeds the legal powers granted to him in primary legislation.

As the name of the school, that I’ll withhold for the moment; I don’t want to completely blow a story that I can easily place with the local press and, to be scrupulously fair, I want to give the school a chance to back down of its own accord before deploying the heavy artillery

In the mean time, I’ll be advising my son not to submit to a body search and to pass the information that the school does not have the right to conduct random searches on to his friends and schoolmates…

…because that’s what I consider to be citizenship education.