Siegfried Biermair, the head of a school in Gunskirchen, Upper Austria, sent a letter to parents on Monday informing them of the kissing ban after teachers complained that the kissing rituals of some girls were getting out of hand.

Instead of simply greeting each other with a light peck on the cheeks between lessons, some 14-year-olds had taken to 'theatrically falling into each other's arms and kissing each other on the mouth, sometimes very intimately and for many minutes,' Mr Biermair complained.

Such behaviour 'could lead to undesirable developments' and boys could also start demanding kisses, he argued.

So, at a meeting, teachers and a number of parents had voted unanimously in favour of a kissing ban.

However, the move was immediately slammed as 'ridiculous' and 'excessive", not only by pupils, but by politicians as well.

'The ban is not only totally disproportionate, it's also completely counterproductive,' said Matthias Hansy, head of Austria's Pupil's Union in a statement.

'There are much more pressing problems at our schools, such as the increasing trend towards violence,' Mr Hansy said.

Another pupils' group, 'Aktion Kritischer Schueler' or AKS, said the ban reflected an 'outdated, medieval world-view'.

'We won't allow the dignity and rights of pupils to be downtrodden in this way,' said AKS head Vanessa Gaigg.

'School directors are not monarchs who can impose their ridiculous values on pupils.'

AKS urged Upper Austria's schools minister, Fritz Enzenhofer, to overturn the ban immediately and the group said it would organise a 'kiss-in' protest in Enzenhofer's office next week if he refused.

A politician from the far-right populist BZOe party, Rainer Widmann, saw the ban as an 'undue interference in pupils' privacy.' The education expert of the regional branch of the environmental Green party, Gottfried Hirz, agreed.

'We should be happy that at a time when violent videos and increasing violence in schools, pupils are once again displaying behaviour of mutual affection,' Mr Hirz said.

'Don't we have more pressing pedagogical problems in our schools at the moment?' -- AFP