Tony Halpin, Times Education Editor, and Alex Blair, Times Education Correspondent, explain why Labour and the Conservatives are getting tough on school discipline:

How serious is the problem of discipline in schools?

A total of 17,000 children were excluded for violence in the summer term in 2003. Thirty-one per cent of teachers want to leave the profession because of violence and disruption This is the main reason teachers give for wanting to leave. It's definitely a problem: it wears teachers down and it winds parents up. Serious violence is, however, rare in schools.

What are the differences between the Labour and Conservative policies?

Less than it looks. The Tories' plans for Turnaround Schools appear to be the same thing as the pupil referral units that Labour has set up, only with more money. The Tories are arguing that there are too many pupils in the units. They say that by making the units bigger the children will be better educated and not ghettoised.

One definite difference is that the Conservatives want to scrap independent appeals panels for excluded pupils. They are admitting quite openly that the only recourse for parents wanting to challenge an exclusion would be to go to court. This would tip the balance back in favour of the headteachers so that when they say, 'We can't have this child any longer' that is listened to and they won't face the prospect of having the child back.

The other difference is that the Tories would hand over a pot of cash to headteachers to buy metal detectors and drug testing kits.

Are these policies likely to succeed?

Both parties believe school discipline is fertile election territory, but both are dealing with the symptoms not the causes. It's important to say that bad behaviour in schools should not be tolerated. But it's also very easy to use expressions like 'zero tolerance' when you haven't really defined what it is that you want to happen.

Ruth Kelly is right to say that it's as much the responsibility of parents to make sure pupils behave but there's not much schools can do to make parents exercise their responsibilities. If parents assert their rights over their responsibilities it's an area for conflict.

Teachers have complained for years that they lack the tools to maintain order. Once persuasion fails, the sanctions are only escalating forms of exclusion.

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