Teachers accused of abuse of pupils should be guaranteed anonymity while the allegations are investigated, the Lord Chancellor said yesterday.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton said that teachers’ reputations were being ruined by the “allegations culture” and an unfair disciplinary process that could leave their careers in tatters even if allegations proved to be completely unfounded.

The Lord Chancellor also called for a more “common sense” approach to human rights. Head teachers were perfectly justified, for example, in refusing unreasonable demands from Muslim pupils who claimed that it was their human right to wear Islamic dress in schools. He cited the decision of a Luton school to stop Shabina Begum wearing a jilbab – a long loose gown – to class.

Lord Falconer told the conference of the National Association of Head Teachers that teachers should not face automatic suspension when an allegation was made against them. False accusations should no longer be automatically reported to the local authority or appear on Criminal Records Bureau checks and job references, he said, and schools should have some means of making public statements of a teacher’s innocence as soon as they were cleared of a spurious allegation.

Suspensions and investigations that lasted for years “ruin lives often utterly unfairly”, he said. If teachers facing accusations were automatically suspended, regardless of the allegations’ merits, that knowledge could spread very quickly, ruining reputations, Lord Falconer said. Nor was it fair that “patently false” accusations should be allowed to follow teachers through their entire career.

Teachers have long complained that allegations against them are recorded by the school and reported to the local authority. This means that the accusations appear on criminal record checks and job references, even when the teacher is cleared, blighting their chances for career advancement.

“Where it’s demonstrably the case that the allegation is false there should be greater discretion as to whether it’s recorded,” Lord Falconer said.

Mick Brookes, the association’s general secretary, said that heads were sometimes able to protect teachers from false allegations by not reporting them to the local authority, yet there was nobody to protect heads when they fell victim. An accusation against a head would automatically be referred to the authority, which would suspend them at once.

“If an allegation is made against a head, the cavalry come out very quickly. Social services are there in squads and there is an immediate, very high escalation,” Mr Brookes said.

As a head teacher he had taken the risk of not reporting four cases in which his teachers had been accused of abuse because he had found all the cases to be unfounded. Those teachers were left to get on with their careers. He contrasted this with the case of a head who has been suspended and who attempted suicide as a result, even though the union expects him to be cleared of the claims against him.

Lord Falconer rejected the union’s demands for sanctions against those who levelled false accusations against teachers and heads, arguing that this might deter those with genuine grievances from reporting them. He also ruled out changes to criminal investigations of teachers.

Public misunderstanding of human rights legislation partly explained the “allegations culture”, the Lord Chancellor suggested. An overzealous interpretation of the Human Rights Act had led to claims in the name of “human rights” that were nothing of the sort.

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