THE leader of a new task force charged with taming unruly pupils warned the Government yesterday against “demonising” children.

Sir Alan Steer was appointed yesterday by Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary, to chair a committee of heads and teachers with proven records in tackling poor behaviour.

She said they would be expected to recommend three or four key proposals for enforcing a “culture of respect” in every school through zero tolerance of poor behaviour.

But Sir Alan told The Times that he saw no simple solution to the issue and did not recognise “zero tolerance”. He said: “I can understand that Government and Opposition wants the magic button, but the truth is it probably does not exist.

“We have to be careful that we do not spend all our time talking about whether we should punish children this way or that way. It is a pretty sterile discussion.

“The real skill is making sure you don’t have to punish them at all by having a focus on consistency of good lessons and good teaching.”

Sir Alan, who was knighted last year for his success as head of Seven Kings High School in Ilford, Essex, continued: “We must not demonise young people. At the moment, we are in danger of whipping discussions up into a frenzy, which will make it very difficult to assess the real issues. Nobody is denying there are problems but not all young people are horrible. Zero tolerance is not a phrase I would use and I don’t know quite what it means.”

Ms Kelly said the group would report by October on whether there should be a national code of behaviour in schools, improved teacher training to deal with unruly pupils, and extra disciplinary powers for heads. It would also consider more protection for teachers and review the operation of appeals panels.

“If this group can come up with three or four programmes that clearly work ... in a range of schools, then I think that would be a very valuable contribution,” the Education Secretary told the Today programme on BBC Radio 4. “Then we can say to schools, you should adopt one of these programmes and there is no excuse any more for poor behaviour in the classroom.”

Sir Alan, a head for 20 years, said that much disruption was also linked to a failure in schools to deal effectively with children who had special educational needs. “If we put the message out to children that we don’t value them and don’t make efforts to look after them, it is hardly surprising that we get misbehaviour,” he said.

“Many secondary schools are also quite unattractive places. If we want children to behave, we want schools to be reasonably civilised, with carpets on the floors, pictures on the walls and to be clean.”

He would be unhappy if a zero tolerance policy translated into large numbers of children being kicked out of schools. Parents could not expel children for having a tantrum and teachers had to be equally willing to “go the extra mile”.

“Children are children, they are learning to behave and sometimes they make mistakes,” he said.

Sir Alan applauded the Government for bringing heads and teachers into the policy-making process, but said that schools already knew most of the answers on discipline. But policies had to be applied more consistently across the education system.

Tony Blair pledged after the general election to tackle growing disrespect in society. Ms Kelly acknowledged that behaviour was unsatisfactory in a “persistent minority” of schools, which she was determined to tackle.

But parents had to take their responsibilities more seriously too. Ms Kelly said: “Parents have the right to have their child educated in an orderly classroom. But they also have a responsibility to get their child to school every day ready to learn.”

Teachers’ unions welcomed the initiative. Ms Kelly has invited them to nominate representatives for the behaviour and discipline group.

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