ACT candidate Paul Henry has unveiled a classroom discipline policy that would give teachers the legal power to remove "seriously or persistently disruptive" students from class, use "reasonable force" in specific circumstances, and impose financial penalties on parents who fail to engage when their child's behaviour escalates.

Henry announced the policy in Auckland on Sunday. He is standing as an ACT Party list candidate in the 2026 New Zealand general election.

The policy's centrepiece is a proposed "clarification" of Section 99 of the Education and Training Act 2020, which currently allows school staff to physically restrain students as a last resort to prevent harm, provided the method used is "reasonable and proportionate." Henry said the ambiguity in the current rules means many teachers cannot face the prospect of intervening and take the "easy road out."

Under ACT's plan, teachers would be able to send disruptive students to a supervised space and would be legally protected when using a "reasonable and proportionate" intervention to prevent harm or destruction of property. Henry said the law would give teachers clear legal protections and the power to regain "order" in the classroom.

Henry was explicit that the policy would allow teachers to use "reasonable force" in defined circumstances but denied that "corporal punishment" would be permitted.

The policy would also make assaulting a teacher, staff member, or student a trigger for immediate removal and mandatory stand-down or suspension. Serious assaults would be referred to Police Youth Aid.

On the parental accountability front, ACT would require parents to get involved when a student's behaviour became serious or repeated. Parents who fail to attend a mandatory meeting without a reasonable excuse could be fined up to $300 for a first offence and up to $3000 for subsequent offences. Parents could also be held financially responsible for the cost of deliberate property damage caused by their child at school, with the cost recoverable as a debt if unpaid.

Henry framed the proposal as giving teachers the legal certainty they currently lack. The existing Section 99 framework already permits physical restraint as a last resort, but the policy's argument is that the statutory language is too vague for teachers to feel confident acting within it. ACT's proposal would not remove the "reasonable and proportionate" standard but would seek to make its boundaries more explicit.

The policy lands as classroom disruption and teacher retention remain live issues in the education policy debate. The inclusion of fines for parents who do not attend mandatory meetings, and the prospect of parents being held liable for deliberate property damage, marks a significant expansion of parental accountability under the Education and Training Act regime. Whether such fines would survive legislative scrutiny under the Bill of Rights Act 1990, particularly given the right to be free from disproportionate penalties, would be a question for the House if ACT were in a position to advance the policy.

The referral of serious assaults to Police Youth Aid would formalise a pathway that, in practice, is already available to schools but is not currently mandated in statute. Making it mandatory would remove principal discretion in those cases.

For those working in and around the Beehive, the policy is notable less for its individual components than for the political signal it sends. ACT is positioning classroom discipline as a law-and-order issue within the education portfolio, linking teacher authority to physical safety and parental responsibility to financial consequence. That framing will resonate with voters concerned about classroom violence, but it will also draw scrutiny from education sector groups likely to question whether fines and expanded force provisions address the underlying causes of disruptive behaviour or simply shift the burden.

The policy's fate depends on ACT's post-election position. As a list candidate, Henry's ability to advance it turns on both his own ranking and the party's overall seat count, and on whether a coalition agreement would include any of its provisions.

Source: RNZ