What this is
The Department of Education in Northern Ireland’s statutory guidance on restraint and seclusion in schools, published on 6 September 2023 and applying to all schools. It followed an interim version issued in 2021, which asked schools to meet a standard without obliging them to record when they had restrained a pupil. It came out of years of parent campaigning and was out for consultation until 3 November 2023.
What it records
Restraint and seclusion “should only ever be used when it is necessary and proportionate to do so in order to keep children, young people, and others from coming to harm”, and never as punishment.
Seclusion is defined as “placing a child or young person involuntarily in any environment in which they are alone and prevented from leaving”. It “must never be used in educational settings in Northern Ireland unless in a crisis situation where it is necessary for the prevention of serious physical harm to individuals”.
Mechanical restraint, including belts or cuffs used to restrain a pupil’s movement, “must never be used in educational settings in Northern Ireland to control behaviour or as a punitive measure”. That sentence has no crisis exception in it.
Schools have a legal duty to inform parents or carers where a child has been restrained or secluded, and must keep a detailed record of any incident.
The status is the enforcement. As the guidance states, “as statutory guidance, any departure from it will be unlawful unless there is a compelling reason for doing so”.
How to read it
Seclusion turns on the child’s position, not the room’s name. A quiet room, a safe space and a timeout are all seclusion if the child is alone and cannot leave.
The prohibition on mechanical restraint is absolute in a way the permission for holding a child is not.
A belt or a cuff has no crisis exception. A physical hold does, and only where it is needed to prevent serious physical harm.
The reading that matters most is about duties, not incidents. A document like this tells you what a school must do, and nothing about whether a particular school did it. The 2021 version is the illustration: a standard with no record requirement can be met on paper while a restraint leaves no document behind. What changed is that there is now a document to inspect, and a parent to tell.
Where it stops
It is guidance, so it creates duties and makes no findings. No inspection report, prosecution or complaint sits behind this page, and none is summarised in it.
It applies to schools in Northern Ireland. England, Scotland and Wales each have their own position, and in England neither the notification duty nor the recording duty is in statute. Schools in England are not governed by this text, and this page does not describe what is.
The guidance document itself was not opened for this entry. Its wording is quoted as BBC News NI reported it on the day of publication, which makes this a single press source. Every quotation above is that report’s wording, not the Department’s document read at first hand.
Sources
If your school is rewriting a behaviour or restraint policy against this guidance, Positive Handling is where our school-facing training sits, including the recording and the call home.
Reviewed 20 October 2026.