Katrina Lee, principal at Riverslea School, said the six-year-old beat on her office window with a stick.

A six-year-old boy spent 45 minutes running around the roof of a Hastings school before being talked down by police.

"He was running along above the classroom roofs, jumped on to the roof of my office, grabbed a stick and hit my windows," Katrina Lee, principal of Riverslea School, said on Tuesday.

​"At one stage another boy got up with him. We got the second one down by threatening to call police.

JOHN COWPLAND/ FAIRFAX NZ The boy ran along the roof above several classrooms, and was up there for 45 minutes before being talked down.

"It was actually the community patrol that turned up first and they talked him down. When the police officer arrived, he had a talk to the boy. I'm not sure whether the boy took a lot of notice, to be honest."

School staff tried to talk the boy down before calling police, but when it became clear he was not going to be swayed, she rang the Ministry of Education.

"I said I didn't think we could use ladders to get on the roof under the new health and safety legislation, and the man I spoke to agreed," she said.

Lee has been principal of the school since January. It has two fulltime teachers and one part-timer, catering for 41 pupils from new entrants to year 6.

"We have some kids that can be challenging and, like many schools, we can feel like we're swimming upstream with them," she said.

"This sort of behaviour might seem amusing, but it is actually symptomatic of a much greater problem around what we as teachers are dealing with on a day-to-day basis, and it reinforces the message that schools like ours really need community support.

"We are working incredibly hard here, but the issues we, and other schools, are dealing with are challenging. Having said that, this is a great little school and we are achieving great things."

Senior Sergeant Dan Foley said he sympathised with Lee's situation.

"When people are desperate, we are the ones they ring because we are there for everyone. The very nature of our role means we go where we're needed.

"The school had obviously tried family and they weren't available, and there was no other solution, so we stepped in."

Many school boards and principals have feared that, under the Health and Safety at Work Act introduced last month, they might become liable for individual penalties in the event of an accident.

Ministry of Education head of sector enablement and support Katrina Casey said schools had been supported since the new act came in, and workshops had addressed concerns that it could make teachers reluctant to deal with students with "behavioural issues".

"Our message has always been that schools which take all reasonable steps and have clear health and safety policies and practices in place will be meeting their statutory health and safety obligations."

WorkSafe NZ said it did not know the details of the incident but that, in general, "the focus must be on the safety of the child first and foremost and on any staff or other person involved".

"WorkSafe is not in a position to make a judgment on what the best course of action would be – but calling the emergency services might well have been the appropriate call.

"In any event, the change from the previous health and safety law to the new Health and Safety at Work Act would not make any difference to how a school should manage such an event."

WorkSafe has said in the past that, if a school is aware of a risk and takes an action that results in a child being hurt, it is unlikely to face a penalty.

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