Teachers to learn lessons over stress

TEACHERS need to better understand how ‘stress hormones’ affect kids in care before kicking them out of school for bad behaviour, bosses say.

Childhood trauma, and how it might cause children to react to stressful situations should be taken into account when deciding what action to take, say Oldham council officers.

A ‘pioneering’ approach has been introduced to train teachers to better understand the needs of looked-after children and young people.

Chiefs say this has helped to reduce the number being excluded from mainstream education, which is 1.4 per cent down from the 2017 figures.

A meeting of the overview and scrutiny committee heard that so-called ‘stress hormones’ could impact how pupils react.

Andrew Sutherland, Oldham’s director of education and early years, said: “We do know that when some young people are under significant stress, then there can be a physiological reaction caused by cortisol, for example, so their behaviour levels wouldn’t be rational in the way we would normally anticipate.

“So when schools understand that better, when teachers understand that better and the needs of these young people, then they will respond more positively. In addition, the work of our mental health support team working with our schools is designed to help develop and reinforce that understanding.”