Local authorities are increasingly giving in to parents' unacceptable demands about the "rights" of their children at school, the president of one of Scotland's largest teaching unions said yesterday.

Ann Ballinger, president of the Scottish Secondary Teachers' Association (SSTA), told the union's annual conference in Peebles that this was making it difficult to deal with disruptive behaviour.

She said: "We spend an increasing amount of time dealing with disruption caused by pupils who, when asked to undertake a task, or punishment or detention respond loudly with, You can't make me, I have rights'.

"An increasing amount of time is taken up in schools dealing with pupils who have rights and with their parents who demand action against teachers depriving their little angel' of his or her rights.

"At the same time, some local authorities are giving in to the I have rights' argument and instructing schools not to confront the problem, but to appease complaining parents."

As revealed in The Herald yesterday, Ms Ballinger also warned staff at secondary schools across Scotland are routinely bullied by headteachers and deputy heads.

She told the conference that "far too many" teachers are now subject to intimidation from management.

David Eaglesham, general secretary of the SSTA, echoed the concerns. He said: "We are increasingly aware of local authorities who simply take the side of parents as the line of least resistance.

"Unfortunately, what that does is leave the teacher without the support they need while actually rewarding the bad behaviour that caused the problem in the first place."

Mr Eaglesham went on to attack the way the ongoing reform of what is taught in schools - the so-called Curriculum for Excellence - claiming there was widespread confusion among teachers about what its aims were and how it would be implemented.

Yesterday's conference saw a succession of motions criticising the initiative with warnings that successive governments were paying only "lip service" to teachers' views.

There were also worries about moves to scrap Standard Grades and introduce compulsory literacy and numeracy tests in S4.

Mr Eaglesham warned that leaving decisions to local authorities on what the curriculum would look like risked the creation of "32 different curriculums for 32 local authorities".

However Fiona Hyslop, the Education Secretary, urged delegates to get involved in the forthcoming consultation exercise for the proposed reforms. "We are at a key stage in these changes but there is plenty of time and opportunity for teachers to have their say," she said.