'Just bonkers' - top Kiwi educators slam UK principal's pledge to expel students in relationships

Smiling female high school student communicating with her male friend during a class in the classroom. Focus is on girl.

A UK headmaster's radically chaste pledge to expel any of his students that have boyfriends or girlfriends has been derided as "insanity" and "end of the spectrum" by top Kiwi educators.

Principal of $65,000-a -year (NZD) Ruthin School in north Wales, Toby Belfield, was reported today in the Telegraph of telling staff he would "not hesitate" to expel students who engaged in sexual contact.

Mr Belfield claimed the "diversion of romance" at school left students "at danger of academically underachieving", and he would expel or give worse university references to those who were in relationships.

But the extreme stance by the principal of the 700-year-old leading Welsh school has been slammed by Kiwi teaching unions and school principals.

"It seems on the face of it to be a PR or marketing stunt that's unfortunately batshit crazy and the man appears to have lost the run of himself," Post Primary Teachers Association President Jack Boyle said.

"If you set out to establish a school, you know 'the Welsh school of abstinence' because the only priority is entering top flight universities as the only pathway to being a functioning member of society then you've got a fairly crazy view I would have thought as an educator.

"In New Zealand there will not be a single school that runs that level of intervention into the personal lives of their students, nor should there be."

Mr Boyle said any "patchy anecdotal evidence" that school student relationships hinder academic performance is massively outweighed by empirical evidence that top-flight student performers have strong foundations in a variety of learning skills - such as "relationship competencies".

The Welsh principal's prohibition on student relationships was also described as extreme and foreign to the New Zealand education system by Wellington's Scots College Headmaster Graeme Yule.

"This story seems like a bit of a stretch. I suspect the view of this principal is at the outer end of the spectrum and not one we would ascribe to at Scots College," Mr Yule said.

"We at Scots have a pastoral program that focuses on students building positive relationships of all types.

"Surely the aim of an educational institution should be to prepare students for their futures both academically and socially."

Mr Boyle said the closet "proxy" to this kind of extreme policy in Kiwi schools would be in some integrated Catholic colleges where sex-ed classes are not part of their set curriculum.

But Mr Boyle said even these New Zealand integrated Catholic schools would hold equivalent personal development classes external to the school classes - as extra-curricular.

"Even then I don't think there would be any of those schools who would have written, or assumed, a policy of 'if you have a relationship of any sort therefore this is not the school for you' because that's just bonkers," Mr Boyle said.

The influence of a tiered UK social system was also highlighted as a possible explanation for such extreme conservative educational values.

"Perhaps it's much more cut throat over there, you've got your traditional schools, your free schools, and your charter schools," Mr Boyle said.

"You'd have to think there was some sort of justification for the insanity because there has been, as part of the neo-liberal agenda, the view that choice is good, choice means you've got to establish your brand.

"But that branding exercise he's [Ruthin School principal Toby Belfield] going through is pretty wobbly I'd expect."

Principal Belfield publicly identifies the goal of Ruthin School to fulfill students potential to "go to the best universities in the world".

Belfield also last year banned his students from entering parks or restaurants, ordering takeaways, or smoking and drinking - regardless of being the legal age.

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