SCHOOL, PARENTS URGED TO MEET ON DRUG EXPULSIONS

A courtroom challenge by two teenage boys who were expelled from their
school for smoking cannabis at a private party was adjourned yesterday by
the High Court.

Mr Justice James Kearns put the case off for a week so the boys and their
parents could have an opportunity to speak to the school's board of
management.

The teenagers admitted they took cannabis for their own use at a party out
of school hours in a pub near Dublin last month. Their headmaster expelled
the boys after hearing of the incident from a teacher who was also in the
pub at the time.

The judge made no final order in the case and suggested the boys and their
parents should have an opportunity of addressing the school's board of
governors prior to the possibility of any lengthy suspension or expulsion.

He said it was desirable any meetings should take place without lawyers
because there was something inherently offensive in school authorities
being obliged to thrash out discipline problems with parents if either side
went to such meetings with lawyers. Legal representation should be a last
resort, he urged.

He stressed the school was still free to impose a long suspension or
expulsion on the boys if, after hearing submissions from the boys and their
parents, the board of governors felt that was appropriate.

Given that Department of Education guidelines on discipline do not apply to
unrecognised private schools such as the school in this case the judge
outlined a number of pointers to assist such schools.

He said that if a long term suspension or expulsion was to take place,
rules of natural justice required that students or parents should be
permitted to make representations on penalties. Lawyers should ideally not
be involved in such hearings.

The two boys were expelled on October 2 last after they admitted smoking
cannabis and expressed remorse in letters to the school.

Their parents also made representations but the board of governors upheld
the headmaster's decision to expel them. They have been out of school since
October 1 and are due to sit their Leaving Cert next year.

Mr Justice Kearns said there could be no doubt the school was entitled to
take an extremely severe line on drug use, even of soft drugs, because any
slippage of discipline could have the most deleterious implications for
student users, other students and the school generally.

Once a court has decided that a school had in general terms been fair, it
should not lightly interfere with the autonomy of a school or do anything
which might have the effect of damaging its capacity to discipline its
students given that the school, with its vast experience and knowledge of
its pupils, usually knows best, the judge said.

It was not appropriate for a court to state whether a punishment should be
suspension or expulsion in an individual case, unless there appeared to be
a want of any reasonable basis for the decision of the school authority.

However, he added it was a cause for concern that the expulsions were put
in place before either the students or their parents had an opportunity of
making representations.

Any form of automatic expulsion seemed to him to breach an essential
requirement of natural justice, that a person be allowed address the
question of penalty before that penalty was imposed, the judge said.