Lunchtime lock-in

Published: 31 March, 2011

• SCHOOLS are not prisons and Jo Armitage, headteacher of Acland Burghley School has no right to stop pupils going out at lunchtime (Head fights the takeaways with a lunch lock-in, March 24). 

Did she ask the pupils if they wanted their freedom curtailed like this? Of course not. Superheads tend to be egomaniacs whose new brooms sweep clean by imposing more regulations, not less.

As a democrat, I believe that heads should be elected by the staff and all school rules require the agreement of a freely elected school council. As a libertarian, I rather hope Acland Burghley’s pupils resist by bunking off. What they eat is none of their patronising teachers’ business. 

As for one objection, to paraphrase the great anti-slavery campaigner Sojourner Truth “Ain’t the kids part of the ‘community’”?

MARK TAHA
Venner Road, SE26