After extensive consultation, the Department for Education and Skills's new guidance, published in March, describes the use of drug tests and sniffer dogs as an option, but does not recommend their use. Indeed, a near final draft of the guidance advised against. Tony Blair sowed the seeds of confusion when, in an interview for the News of the World just days before the guidance was published, he seemed to advocate drug testing.
DrugScope has highlighted the increasing use of sniffer dogs in schools.
The guidance is silent on the use of dogs to search school buses, but recently pupils, some as young as 11, arriving in buses at a school in Shropshire were met by more than 20 police officers with police vans and sniffer dogs. Pupils who were believed to be potential drug users were taken to one side and searched.
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