What happened
Scotland now has a law on restraint and seclusion in schools. A Member’s Bill introduced by Daniel Johnson MSP on 17 March 2025 passed at Stage 3 on 24 March 2026 by 121 votes to none, per the Parliament’s bill page, and became the Restraint and Seclusion in Schools (Scotland) Act 2026 when it received Royal Assent on 26 May 2026.
It requires ministers to issue statutory guidance and allows them to set training standards. Schools must tell parents when a child has been restrained or secluded, and record and report each incident. The aim is restraint only as a last resort, where there is an immediate risk of harm.
A decade of campaigning stands behind it: BBC News reported on 24 March 2026 that the Act is known by the name of a pupil restrained at a special school at 11 until he lost consciousness. This page does not use that name.
The outcome
This is law, not a proposal, which matters where “guidance” often means a document a school may ignore.
What is law so far is the frame, not the content. The duties to notify, record and report sit in the Act, but the guidance telling staff what they require has still to be written, with teaching unions to be consulted, per BBC News of 24 March 2026. Training standards are a power, not an obligation.
The Act covers public and independently funded schools, but the Parliament’s page states the duties would not apply to nursery schools.
What went wrong
The failure the Act answers is informational. Before it, a parent could be told nothing, a school could keep no count, and nobody outside the building could see a pattern. A pupil who cannot describe his day depends on the adults in the room and on a record made at the time.
Three gaps remain. Nursery schools are outside the duties. The guidance does not yet exist. And ministers “will be able to set” training standards, per BBC News of 24 March 2026: a permission, not a requirement.
What it teaches
A duty to notify changes behaviour in a way a value statement does not. Staff know any use of restraint reaches a parent that day, so the decision becomes deliberate: what else was available, who agreed it, when it was reviewed.
Recording is the engine: nothing can be counted or reduced until it is written down, and Johnson’s case was that authorities and inspectors need the numbers to see where practice must improve.
A statutory floor is still a floor. The argument elsewhere is no longer that this cannot be done.
Questions for the room
- If a parent asked today for every record of restraint used on their child, what would you hand them, and how quickly?
- Which pupils cannot tell a parent what happened to them? Who tells that parent, and who owns that duty?
- Your policy says last resort. What would show a parent or inspector it was the last resort and not the fourth option?
Evidence and limits
Confidence: confirmed for the Act and its dates; both sources were read live on 7 November 2026. The Act’s text was not read, so what it requires rests on the Parliament’s summary and BBC reporting; the sections as enacted and the wording of the reporting duty are unverified.
The pupil is not named at any age, and the campaign name taken from his first name is not used, though the BBC names him. His mother, the school and its town are withheld for the same reason. Daniel Johnson MSP is named as the Bill’s introducer.
Our positive handling training for schools covers de-escalation, last-resort restraint and the recording the Act now requires.
Sources
- Scottish Parliament, 26 May 2026 · https://www.parliament.scot/bills-and-laws/bills/s6/restraint-and-seclusion-in-schools-scotland-bill
- BBC News, 24 March 2026 · https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgrzkwkzkpo
Reviewed 7 November 2026.