I don't know about the UK, but schools in the US make up one of the three categories of places where you relinquish some fundamental rights, the other two being prisons and military bases.
For example, my high school in Maryland officially forbids ALL ELECTRONICS. In practice this generally only refers to cell phones and iPods, I can usually pull out a laptop and the faculty doesn't care, but they can also apply that rule whenever it makes their jobs easier. For example, I started recording classes to enhance my notes, and the school told me I must cease doing so, originally because they claimed it was an invasion of the teachers' privacy (!), then later that it was an invasion of students' privacy; but when I argued that the state law against recording people without their consent only applied to private conversations, and that no conversation could be considered private in a public place such as a school, they responded by simply saying that I can't record because it involve the use of an electronic device.
In my personal experience, the combination of sensory abilities, a brain and the motor skills required to take notes with a pencil on paper works alright sometimes.
Hello from Europe! You would be surprised how many rights inmates have over here. I am pretty certain the same applies to schools, they don't have fundamentally more rights over their students in any way I could remember.
I don't know the exact laws but I know that certain property is "publicly owned," but not "public property" available to the general public. Government buildings, schools, airports, parks, etc have different rules.
Children in general are not given as many rights as adults--they lack the right to vote, to bear arms, etc. It's not just schools, and it's not necessarily wrong.
yes, it's not necessarily wrong, but it tends to end up that way unless you are careful to justify things on a case-by-case basis. it's all to easy to end up at "no, you cannot do this, because we say so and we have been given carte blanche to infringe on your rights".