Posted By Jonathan Breeze Surely Emma, if the noise in a classroom breaches any action levels, you should be replacing the teacher with one that can exert more control, not providing noise screens. Just a thought.

Posted By Jonathan Breeze But John, If noise is breaching action levels, then this is prima facie evidence that the teacher is not competent and should be replaced with a competent one? A breach of duty would only occur if the school did not replace the incompetent teacher with a competent one. (Of course this all gets a bit messy when the teaching of music is concerned - because by definition that's all about noise.)

Posted By J Knight I still feel that we have to tackle the risk at source; if quieter kids aren't possible for technical or moral reasons (boo!!), we could simply go with the flow and stop trying to stop the little fiends from bunking off; no kids, no noise, case solved. sorry if I don't seem to be atking this too seriously, but the last post (time eighting and dilay dose etc) says all that can be sensibly said on this subject, John