Protecting Teachers Is Essential — But Safety Orders Alone Won’t Fix School Culture

Proposed new laws in New South Wales would give principals the power to ban parents and carers from coming within 25 metres of school grounds, camps, excursions and sporting venues if they engage in bullying, threatening or unreasonable behaviour towards school staff. The proposed measures would also allow schools to restrict contact through email, phone, social media and school communication apps, with fines of up to $5,500 for breaches. The proposal follows growing concern about the treatment of teachers and school leaders, and mirrors powers already operating in Victoria through the School Community Safety Order Scheme.

At The Stand-Up Project, we believe these kinds of protections are important. No teacher or principal should have to work in an environment where harassment, intimidation or aggression is treated as part of the job. Schools should be safe places not only for students, but also for the adults responsible for educating and supporting them.

There is no question that stronger protections are needed. Recent national data from ACU shows the scale of the problem. In 2025, nearly half of principals reported experiencing physical violence and more than half reported threats of violence. In New South Wales specifically, reported threats of violence rose from 28.9% in 2011 to 45.0% in 2025, while physical violence rose from 21.9% to 37.8%. Principals are also working an average of almost 54 hours per week, with workload, lack of time for teaching and learning, and student-related issues among their biggest stressors.

Just as concerning is the role that some parents and carers are playing in this pattern. ACU’s 2024 findings, published in 2025, showed that parents and caregivers were responsible for 87.6% of reported cyberbullying of school leaders, and 63.7% of threats of violence reported by principals involved parents or carers. Among principals who experienced physical violence, one in five said parents were responsible. The report specifically recommended stronger mechanisms to address inappropriate behaviour from parents and cited Victoria’s safety order model as one example.

These figures should concern all of us. When adults model hostility, intimidation or disrespect towards teachers, it does not stay contained to the staffroom or the front office. Young people watch how adults behave. They absorb what is normal, what is tolerated and how power is used in conflict. That is why this issue is not just about staff safety. It is also about the kind of school culture children are learning from every day.

That said, safety orders should be understood for what they are: a last-resort protection tool. Victoria’s scheme makes this explicit. The orders are designed to stop or limit harmful, threatening or abusive behaviour where less restrictive options are not enough. They can restrict entry to school grounds, prevent contact with staff, and limit conduct on school-related communication platforms. They are necessary in serious cases, but they are not a substitute for healthy communication, strong relationships or prevention-focused culture building.

This is where we think the national conversation needs to go further.

If schools are increasingly needing legal tools to protect teachers from adults in the school community, then we also need to ask what is happening upstream. What messages are students receiving about respect, conflict, entitlement and accountability? How are families being engaged in ways that reinforce shared expectations rather than deepen division? And what proactive work is being done to build a school culture where aggression, bullying and public hostility are less likely to emerge in the first place?

At The Stand-Up Project, we have long argued that bullying prevention cannot rely only on reacting once harm occurs. Real change requires primary prevention. It requires schools to actively shape norms around respect, relationships and responsibility before issues escalate. It also requires young people to be part of that work. When students are empowered to lead conversations about bullying, exclusion, bystander behaviour and school culture, they help create communities where respect is practised, not just demanded after the fact.

Teachers and principals should not have to absorb hostility from any direction — not from students, not from online communities, and not from parents. Stronger protections matter. Clear boundaries matter. But if we want safer schools in the long term, we must pair those protections with prevention.

Because the goal should not simply be to give principals more power to keep aggressive adults away.

The goal should be to build school communities where that behaviour is far less likely to happen in the first place.