Poor behaviour in schools
Spouthouse
Posts: 1,046 Forum Member
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It's been in the news recently about poor behaviour in schools continuing to be a huge problem. We will never significantly improve our education system unless we properly fix this. My suggestions:
1) Stop discouraging schools from excluding pupils. In fact, Ofsted should start looking very negatively on schools where behaviour is poor but exclusions are low.
2) Invest very heavily in pupil referral units, so badly behaved kids can quickly and easily be moved somewhere more appropriate.
3) Insist that children have reached an acceptable level of behaviour before they begin school. Make it a parental obligation. Have a probationary period during which time there is not a guarantee of a place unless the parents are prepared to come into school and work alongside their children.
4) Introduce a nationally recognised certificate of conduct, to enable well-behaved pupils to clearly demonstrate to anybody how well-behaved they were at school.
5) Significantly improve initial teacher training, as behaviour management barely figures in most courses.
1) Stop discouraging schools from excluding pupils. In fact, Ofsted should start looking very negatively on schools where behaviour is poor but exclusions are low.
2) Invest very heavily in pupil referral units, so badly behaved kids can quickly and easily be moved somewhere more appropriate.
3) Insist that children have reached an acceptable level of behaviour before they begin school. Make it a parental obligation. Have a probationary period during which time there is not a guarantee of a place unless the parents are prepared to come into school and work alongside their children.
4) Introduce a nationally recognised certificate of conduct, to enable well-behaved pupils to clearly demonstrate to anybody how well-behaved they were at school.
5) Significantly improve initial teacher training, as behaviour management barely figures in most courses.
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Comments
I see it as a long term investment for the future of the country.
All this will be paid for by getting HMRC into order, closing tax loophole to stop avoidance and evasion and making sure every person and company who should pay tax does pay tax.
This is secondary by the way.
1) blame kids, kick them out.
2) blame kids, move them elsewhere.
3) blame parents.
4) hard one this, doesn't seem to blame anyone other than society for not caring about how kids behaved when they were at school.
5) blame training.
Sounds like a charter to excuse teachers from any responsibility
Definitely the words of someone who hasn't set foot in a classroom since they were a pupil themselves...
School staff can only do so much and from my experience they do everything they can. But it's futile without the support of parents. When you've got children coming to school late on empty stomachs, without book bags and half asleep because they've been up since 2am watching mums boyfriend play GTA5 you can't really blame the teachers when they struggle to settle into the school day. It's about time we blamed parents and stopped expecting Teachers to raise our kids, they are educators not guardians.
And as for "kicking kids out"... Too bloody right we should!! If you allow one or two pupils to disrupt a class that sets a president for the rest and then they all think disruptive behaviour is acceptable. Before you know it you've got a whole class who don't learn anything at all. The OP is right about us needing more funding for PRUs because you can't kick out pupils unless they have somewhere to go.
I think the OP has some great ideas... What are yours???
Inspections should be carried out within 24hrs of notice, not with months of forewarning like they currently get.
All finance records should be transparent. If a school is wasting public money they should be held accountable. Likewise if there are significantly more TA staff on roll than teachers or large sums are being spent on supply staff.
If there are personnel issues, there should be firm procedures in place to have it followed up with the relevant bodies and unions asap. Not allow issues to stew on for months or even years in an effort to keep it under the radar.
Basically the whole system is currently flawed from both ends and needs a radical shakeup if we are to stand any hope of achieving the standards we are seeing from much of Europe and East Asia.
I quite understand that it's discouraging not to be the winner. But is making everyone the winner the right answer? We all have individual strengths. Recognise and reward that. So you can't run fast, but you're a fabulous artist or brilliant at maths. Should individual excellence be made mediocre to satisfy some messed up interpretation of equality?
On top of the rules come the parent expectations. I'm sorry to say this because I know it will upset a lot of parents, but quite frankly if you can't control your kid at home then don't expect them to be an angel in school. Kids aren't born with a fully developed moral compass. So if you as a parent don't start training them right when at home for the 4 or 5 years before your kids start formal education then you've really let them down, and you've saddled teachers with an uphill battle.
Sure, make it that the ultimate sanction is available and will be used. I've got no problem with that. But consider the social impact too. e.g. single mum holds down a part time job while her child is at school. The kid is excluded for two weeks. Mum loses her job. Each household faces its own challenges.
I'd much prefer to take a pro-active approach to behavioural issues. Once again this will upset a lot of people, but in some cases I think it's the parents who need to told straight "Your child's behaviour is unacceptable. We are working at this in school but you need to address this at home." Now if that means teaching adults how to be parents then so be it.
Our society has become incredibly insular. We have gone from a time when kids played together in the street and learned to be social to a state of media-driven paranonia; stranger danger; obsession with germs; driving kids everywhere; TV and now iPads as the nanny; the list goes on and on. Is it any wonder that children and teachers have such a hard time?
I think this is a good idea but it may be impractical to have centralised facilities. What happens if you live in the sticks and regular school is already a 20-30 minute journey? What about town or city kids who have to take a bus or wait for school transport? How practical is it to say "Your kid is excluded. They need to go to this place in the next town" when that means two or three hours commute each day?
The exclusion unit needs to be in the school itself. I think it would be more effective to be isolated within your own school population. There's a social stigma that is a powerful learning aid. "I've been bad and now I can't play with my mates" is better than "I've been bad, and now mum and dad are arguing because I have to go to this place and it's hard to get to and it's scary as well so I'd better try to act tough"
Set up a classroom within the school grounds. Bring in an unknown teacher; someone that comes with a different agenda and that the child understands that this isn't someone to be messed with. But then do the one-to-one or one-to-few teaching that instils a sense of work and reward.
Yep. Good idea. Socialises the parents as much as the kids too. Also more likely to work as well since mum or dad is still in the "full time care" phase.
No. Sorry, but I disagree totally here. Good behaviour should be expected as the social norm. It shouldn't be a school achievement. That's the wrong approach.
I don't know what's involved in teacher training in this regard. Has this element been taken away?
What I mean is that when my brother and I were at school 35+ years ago I don't recall there being unruly classes of 5 year olds. If you did something naughty you were punished. No play time or you stood in a corner. Were new teachers taught that as a specific technique and it's not taught now, or is it that they forgot?
Seems to me that society as a whole has lost some of its skill at social conditioning as a result of successive Government initiatives to instil political correctness. Maybe we need to go back to a time when good manners were the order of the day and we weren't afraid of our own shadows and could call a spade a spade.
I agree that smaller classes would make a big difference too, as it would mean less stress for teachers and children would be more likely to focus and not mess about in lessons. I also think, along with the majority of the teaching profession, that the sooner Michael Gove and his skewed teachings of British History are gone the better!
I think Christ Frost talks a lot of sense, but the last paragraph in particular struck a chord.
I worked as a teacher for 2 years, going down the PGCE route of training, and I have to say that behaviour management barely featured in the training. We had a cr@p tutor who had trained and taught primary and seemed under the impression that all our high school students needed to help them learn were colourful resources, up-to-date books and some gimmicky 'lesson starters'. We barely looked at the GCSE / A-level syllabus, let alone how to manage behaviour. It seemed as though training was geared towards year 7 pupils, ignoring the fact that each year group requires a very different approach.
The methods we were taught during the PGCE worked well with younger students. We were taught to make each lesson like a series of short games or tasks, appealing to all different learning styles.
This doesn't work so well with older students who don't like being patronised and have extended writing tasks and lots of information to digest. We were not taught how to do the most basic of things: calm down and focus an unruly class on a Friday afternoon. Nor were we taught how to deal with hulking great teenage boys who won't do anything you ask them to, how to deal with screeching teenage girls who are disrupting the lesson with a 'he said / she said' slanging match, how to break up a fight or motivate someone who 'can't be arsed because Mum said I don't need to worry about exams'.
Honestly, I got through a lot of behaviour management issues by imitating my Mum and her no-nonsense attitude, or by remembering how my own teachers had disciplined us.
At uni the party line seemed to be minimise disruption, don't use words like 'bad' or 'naughty' or 'wrong'; and that policy implemented within a school is a truly horrible prospect to behold. Don't do anything which will cause the parent to complain. Don't rock the boat. In my first school I was spat at, verbally abused, physically threatened... and the worst sanction I could give was to send the child out of the classroom for 5 minutes. There was no behaviour policy, no detention system, nowhere for pupils who misbehaved to go (so they hung around the corridors) and no guidance or support from the management. I wrote reports, I asked for help... nothing.
I've never met a staff so demoralised. They knew the management were afraid of OFSTEAD and afraid of parents complaining and going to the press, so they blamed the staff. Child throws a chair at you? Your fault. Child refuses to accept punishment and threatens to punch you... what do you want the headmaster to do about it? No one was accountable. Experienced teachers moaned constantly about what a battle it was to keep control. For someone in their first teaching post, each day was a nightmare. Pupils knew they could get away with (just about) anything because nobody at the top of the school would punish them.
If I'd not been on a year's contract I would have quit. I saw the year out, but not before I'd turned into a wreck. The second school I taught at had a much clearer policy and wasn't afraid of getting parents in for meetings, excluding pupils, removing them from lessons.
If I were Great Dictator of Britain and had the ability to improve schools, here is what I'd do to make sure that bad behaviour is tackled:
*Each school to have a clear and prominent behaviour policy.
*Each parent and child to sign a yearly behaviour contract, agreeing to abide by the school rules. If you break the contract and the parent doesn't come in for meetings you lose your place next year.
*Mobile phones to be handed in at reception in the morning. Absolutley no phones allowed in the classroom.
*Pupils to stay on campus all day. No trips to town to gorge on chips, sweets and energy drinks in your lunch hour.
* Heavily subsidsed breakfasts available in the morning (e.g. 10p a piece of toast) so nobody starts the day hungry.
*Adopt the Scandanavian approach of team-teaching, with two teachers in the classroom for each lesson.
* Invest in better facilities, so teachers and pupils take pride in their environment and have access to better learning materials.
* More vocational schemes for less academic learners, enabling them to focus on literacy and numeracy whilst pursuing skills-oriented learning. Do this from year 9 onwards, so boys who want to be mechanics aren't stuck in history and art lessons.
* More 'life-related' learning e.g. financial literacy.
* Any behavioural units to be run military-style providing strict discipline. They should not be places to go to opt-out of lessons.
* Inspections at 24 hours' notice. This I feel will give a clearer indication of schools' real strengths and weaknesses. At present schools have far too much time to paper over cracks and present an idealised picture of themselves.
Edir: just seen Tumpy's point, which is a welcome development. I've also thought of one last point - either double the length of the PGCE or make a BEd the only route into teaching. Training needs to be far more thorough than it currently is.
I spent some time in Kenyan schools in the late 90's. Some of the classrooms were lucky to have a floor or windows. Yet behaviour wasn't an issue because the kids saw education as a privilege, and that attitude was prevalent in Kenyan society.
Back to my own childhood in the 70's and 80's; my school was one of the first in the borough to have an IT suite. It was also the first to integrate disabled kids in to the general school population. It was a progressive state school. Yet discipline wasn't compromised. Don't get me wrong, we had our share of disruptive pupils in the lower streamed classes but issues were dealt with effectively and not allowed to ripple out through the school. The attitude was that you were there to learn. There was respect for all teachers, and the exceptional ones were admired and revered. Does that happen today?
Maybe too if kids weren't exposed 24/7 to a constant barrage of stimulation from social media, TV and the 'net, gaming and the idea that being famous for being famous is a realistic career prospect.
That makes sense. I just wonder though what half-baked ideas the policy advice committees might dream up next?
It seems to me that the people with some of the best ideas are teachers themselves. The problem is we are all too scared of offending someone. Well, we've tried the p.c. route for the last 20-odd year and look where it has got us. Isn't it about time we faced facts as a country?
It's funny how ADHD diagnoses have risen in parallel with the general level of media saturation and over exposure to electronic stimulae in day-to-day life. Yes, I'm sure that's a complete coincidence and in no way a causal relationship.
^ Now here's sense.
To be fair, there were some situations when I was a kid where I felt victimised and unheard. But by-and-large if I'd messed up at school then I deserved what was coming.
As a parent myself I am angry that my boy comes home with scrapes and bruises because some other kid can't keep his hands to himself. The teachers seem scared to intervene after an incident. It's ironic that this happened a week after the class completed a module on bullying.
Removing the teachers ability to deal quickly and effectively with situations is counter-productive.
As for parents of a certain type, yes I know where that's coming from. They're bullies too. The quicker we can reinstate a situation where the teacher isn't scared of standing their corner and being backed up then the better for all. Sure, they'll be some pain along the way. But long term we need to re-establish respect.
Also when I was at school some schools did have somewhere where they sent problem kids it was called my school we had to take the ones nobody else wanted (I lived in the right area so had no choice tried to get sent to a different one many times)
I think the difference now is in the general background level of disobedience. A far greater proportion of students feel entitled to argue with the teacher because they know there's no effective sanction.
Imagine how wearing it would be if you were in charge of a team and every one of your requests and instructions was questioned or simply ignored. That's the reality of daily life for many teachers. Worse than that, High School teachers they might go through this anywhere from four to eight times a day depending how many different classes they see.
In My school the bad ones were the majority really but TBF the area I grew up in was a very rough and troubled area
So glad I went to school in the 60's/70's. That must have been hellish trying to learn in that kind of environment.
I think it's more awareness then more people with ADHD- I know adults who have been diagnosed I. Recent years and they were kids in the 70s with no media saturation. Anyways the ADHD brain is diagnosable on scan so nothing to do with consoles etc
However no thread on poor behaviour exists on here without a mention of ADHD
I will- yet again- remind that misbehaviour is not in the diagnostic criteria of ADHD.
She will be at high school next year but if she were there any longer we would have had no choice but to find a better school despite the disruption this would have caused. Luckily her progress is still good (on target or above for her age) but that only begs the question of how far she would have progressed if not for the number of lost lessons when the class has descended into chaos. I wish they could just pick out the unruly children and exclude them, make them someone else's problem. A selfish outlook, I know, but then nobody is going to look out for your kids but you and others might well selfishly hold them back.