The Education Department should have strict guidelines against this rising trend. Teachers, principals and other school staff can lose their career over laying a hand on a student, but increasingly they are becoming the victims of parents exhibiting school rage.

Families of a student who assaults school staff should be banned from the school grounds and in serious cases the student should be banned as well.

Anything less is a gross neglect of occupational, health and safety principles.

If this is already happening, well and good. If school regulations are not in keeping with this zero-tolerance approach, they should be.

School staff have to tolerate enough insolence and intimidation from unruly students, without having to defend themselves against raging parents and other family members.

Touch any staff member of a school and you should be frog marched out the gate by police and charged. No reprieve. If a staffer hesitates about reporting an assault, they are letting the school down.

If an assault takes place, the family should be banned from the school. If that makes it difficult for the family to engage the school regarding their student's education, that's a problem for the family, not the school.

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TODAY we start a new era in our new offices at 113 Cimitiere Street in Launceston.

Sadly, we leave behind a wonderful edifice of history at 71-75 Paterson Street, where The Examiner newspaper has been produced since 1848.

Take it as a given that, while the address may have changed, our dedication to a quality product will never diminish.

Our commitment to quality journalism is set in stone. We are fiercely independent, with news reporting and commentary superior to our rivals. It's what we do, extremely well.

- BARRY PRISMALL, deputy editor