A HEADTEACHER has condemned new licensing laws which, he claims, will encourage under-age students to sneak out to pubs.

Hugh Carson, headmaster of Malvern College, hit out at guidelines due to come into force in August banning boarding schools from serving alcohol to sixth formers who are under 18.

At present, the College Road school, in Malvern, runs a supervised bar for all Sixth Form boarders - from 16 to 18-year-olds - at certain times during the week.

Mr Carson fears that schools, who know students' ages, will no longer be able to oversee sensible drinking among teenagers, who will then head off to town pubs.

"We are strict about who may or may not go into the town, especially on a Saturday evening," he said.

"However, I know that among the large number of pupils involved there will, without the attraction of the supervised bar, be some who will find the temptation to slip off to the pubs very difficult to resist.

"This will in turn give the police and keepers of licensed premises an impossible task".

The move is part of a Government bid to cut down on under-age drinking. However, Mr Carson said that landlords, who did not know students' ages, would struggle to enforce it.

"I would have no problem with the ban if I could be certain that the pubs were in a position to enforce it as effectively as we can, knowing the age of individual pupils as we do; but they are not," he said. "This school, and I know many others, acting in loco parentis to our pupils, allows all Sixth Form boarders to attend a supervised bar at specified times.

"We are trying to encourage sensible attitudes to alcohol among our young people."