The education secretary said telling teachers to avoid physical contact with students was ‘playing to a culture of fear’

Education secretary Michael Gove today condemned children’s charities for telling teachers to stop touching pupils during lessons.

Music organisations and the NSPCC have jointly posted a series of videos online called Keeping Children Safe in Music. They are aimed at music teachers and warn them that “it isn’t necessary to touch a student during a demonstration [of how to play an instrument]“.

Gove has written to the organisations arguing that they are “playing to a culture of fear among both adults and children” and “sending out completely the wrong message”. He said he wanted to “restore common sense” to the issue of teachers touching pupils and that it was “proper and necessary” for adults to touch children when they demonstrated how to play an instrument, play sport, break up violence or comfort a child.

In his letter to the organisations, which include the Musicians’ Union and the charity Youth Music, Gove writes that the videos “reinforce the message that any adult who touches a child is somehow guilty of inappropriate contact”. “We must move away from this presumption.”

The Department for Education will issue guidance on the matter shortly, Gove said.

“If we stigmatise and seek to restrict all physical contact between responsible adults and children, we will only undermine healthy relations between the generations,” Gove said. If you play to the assumption that any physical contact is somehow suspect then we will make children more suspicious of adults and adults more nervous and confused about their role in our society.”

Gove said banning teachers from touching pupils would “drive good people away from teaching for fear of crossing some arbitrary line”.

“Our children will lose out as fewer and fewer adults feel comfortable working with young people.”

Gove said as part of his election pledge that he wanted teachers who are accused of committing a criminal offence against a pupil to remain anonymous until a charge is made.

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