Lack of discipline making it worse

DISCIPLINE in Scots schools has been worsening for several years and teachers fear they have been stripped of the tools they need to deal with it.

Recently, there has been a culture shift away from punitive approaches towards a focus on relationships, restorative practices and nurture strategies.

Instead of dwelling on pupils’ bad behaviour, there has been a tactic of highlighting the positives.

While punishment exercises and detentions are still open to teachers, there is no way of enforcing them without the support of parents.

And staff remain sceptical about the effectiveness of positive approaches, particularly without the time and resources they need to back them up.

Teachers are also concerned about the perceived lack of consequences for pupils when they do engage in disruptive behaviour.

In the Scottish Government’s most recent research into behaviour in Scottish schools published at the end of 2023, staff said they were spending longer on behaviour-related issues than at the last survey in 2016.

One of the main disciplinary tools in the past was exclusion.

But of the 11,676 exclusions in Scotland in 2022-23, just one child was excluded permanently.

Meanwhile, the levels of violence, physical aggression and verbal abuse towards other pupils and teachers alike is on the rise.

Only 65 per cent of primary and secondary staff report generally good behaviour in the classroom.

In the week before the selected research was carried out, a third of staff had suffered verbal abuse, 16 per cent had pupils being physically aggressive towards them and more than one in 10 had suffered physical violence or witnessed it towards other staff in the classroom.

Teachers feel there is a lack of consistency in approaches towards relationships and behaviour and want more clarity on a national level about which behaviours are not acceptable.

But one of the main problems is the growing number of pupils with additional support needs who are in mainstream education but with a lack of adequate resources.

Children and young people with autism and ADHD often exhibit poor behaviour when struggling to get the correct support or diagnoses from Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.

Teachers are calling for more staffing and smaller class sizes to support pupils with behaviour issues and until these demands are met, there is unlikely to be an improvement in the classroom.