Parents who bully and engage in unreasonable or threatening behaviour towards teachers in NSW could soon be banned from entering school vicinities under a proposed state law.
Under the new law, principals will be given the power to ban parents from coming within 25 metres of school grounds, camps, excursions and sporting venues if they exhibit bullying behaviour against school staff, including excessively emailing, calling or texting.
First reported by the Herald, principals will be able to issue school community safety orders against parents who engage in these behaviours across independent, public and Catholic sectors.
The legislation will allow principals to issue orders to ban parents from contacting staff via email, phone, social media or internal school apps. If a parent breaches a protection order, they could be fined up to $5500.
NSW Minister for Education and Early Learning Prue Car said the law would safeguard students’ access to good education with a “focused and committed teacher”.
“Harassment and abuse of teachers impacts their ability to teach and can drive them from the profession, with students suffering the consequences,” she told the Herald.
Child development expert, Sylvia Arotin described the new laws as a necessary move.
“We have to remember that schools need to be a safe zone, not only for students, but also for teachers,” she told Today.
“We’re talking about extreme behaviour from parents. We need to clarify that these situations are a last resort safety tool. They’re not the overall communication methods that schools should be using.”
“A lot of teachers are leaving the sector, not only from that, but a lot of stress and lack of support in the classrooms. This is just adding to the issue at hand. And that then translates onto the children. They’re feeling a lot more anxious, they’re confused about boundaries.”
The new law follows similar powers given to principals in Victoria, which has been in place since 2022 and allows school leaders to ban parents or carers who engage in harmful or abusive behaviour from school grounds.
Last year, a review of the scheme recommended a reduction in the amount of administrative paperwork required to issue a safety order, as well as an extension of the powers to protect staff on social media.
At the time, Australian Education Union Victoria president Justin Mullaly said principals’ powers to ban parents from school grounds should include posts on social media external to schools, such as WhatsApp groups.
“At the moment, the safety orders provide for school social media accounts, but there’s other activity on social media,” he said. “There’s no ability to put in place these orders because they’re not on school accounts.”
“We want to have environments in our schools where we’re bringing up our children, where we’re educating our children in a way that actually meets their needs.”
A 2024 survey of principals found that up to half of school leaders reported they had been subjected to physical violence, with a fifth of those harmed citing parents as the perpetrators. More than fifty percent of principals experienced threats of violence.
The study also found that almost 90 per cent of cyber bullying cases against school leaders were from parents/caregivers.
ACU educational leadership expert Associate Professor Paul Kidson said too many principals were struggling with conditions that would not be condoned in other workplaces.
“[The survey] highlights that the satisfaction principals feel in their job must be front and centre of any strategies to improve conditions for school leaders and, in turn, the teachers, education support staff, and students who rely on them,” he said.
“Depending on what happens with the Federal election, whoever forms government will need to have a resolvable commitment to this cause as many principals feel we’ve finally started moving in the right direction, and we can’t afford to lose that momentum.”