Teachers' Liability: The Standard of Care

Abstract

A continuing dilemma in the area of education and the law concerns the standard of care required of teachers. Why do courts continue to articulate the standard of care as that of the reasonable or careful parent when teachers are required to undertake extensive training and education in order to be certified as capable to teach, and the school environment is different in so many respects from that of the home? Given that the careful parent standard is obviously inappropriate to the school environment why has it continued to be the standard applied by courts?

In this article I attempt to formulate some answers to these questions. The article is in three parts. After noting the relevant case law, I discuss a number of arguments that have been advanced in support of a higher standard of care for teachers than that of the reasonable or careful parent. I then identify a number of reasons why such a higher standard has not been adopted. I suggest that a range of different views or attitudes to teachers and the process of teaching underlies these reasons.