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Useful LinksConsulation on Smacking
Physical punishment has been banned in schools for several years whilst, outside school, there is legislation to protect children from excessive physical punishment by anyone, including parents. The main purpose of this is to protect children from physical abuse. However, the meaning of "excessive" is a matter for the courts to decide and several recent high profile cases, where parents have been prosecuted for smacking their children, have shown that the courts take quite a tough stance. Now, the European Human Rights Convention requires a clearer legal statement than "excessive". The Executive is therefore planning to bring in legislation which will give a tighter definition of what physical punishment is allowed. The key proposals will make it
- illegal for parents to smack a child under the age of three
- illegal for parents to use any implement against a child of any age.
These changes are strongly supported by Children's Charities. Indeed, they would like the legislation to go further and impose a total ban on smacking. However, no one has asked parents. We are therefore running this survey to find out what parents think. Please note, this is not about whether you would or would not smack a child under the age of three or use an implement on an older child. It is a question of whether it should be "illegal" to smack a child under three or use an implement.
We would be grateful if you would discuss this with parents at your school - either your committee or a wider group - and put the numbers for and against each proposal in the boxes provided below. There is no need to try to reach an agreement.
Report: Parents oppose ban on smacking
January 2002.For the last two months SPTC has been running a consultation of members on the Executive's proposals to make it illegal for parents to smack their children who are under three years old.
Forms were sent out in early December and members were asked to consider specific questions about the proposals. They were invited either to discuss the questions within their committee and give us the results of that discussion or to send the consultation out more widely. We further asked members to give us the actual numbers of those who supported and opposed each option, not a single agreed response from the PTA as a whole. We undertook to sum the responses to find the overall figure.
We are extremely grateful to everyone who took part in this consultation. We had replies back from 133 schools - 111 primaries, 18 secondaries, one nursery, one after school care club and two not stated - from throughout Scotland. This meant that just under 2,500 parents engaged in the discussion - rather more than the number who responded to the Executive's official consultation.
The outcome of SPTC's consultation was that:
- parents rejected the proposal that it should be illegal for parents to smack their children under three years of age by 56% to 44%
- parents strongly supported the proposal to make it illegal for parents to hit any child with an implement by 94% to 7% and
- they rejected the call by many children's charities to make it illegal for parents to smack a child of any age by 83% to 17%.
This pattern of response was established very early on in the consultation and remained constant as more and more replies came in. Those people who supplemented their replies with comments questioned how a smack would be defined. They also made it clear that they thought parents' views should be given proper consideration and questioned how the ban on smacking could be implemented or policed. SPTC will now present these findings to the Executive.