What’s the answer to classroom discipline?
Of all the difficulties faced by those working in education, perhaps the most pressing is that of maintaining control of pupils, writes Peter Tait
Nothing affects learning outcomes, holds back school-wide academic attainment or dampens the morale of teachers more than constant, low-level disciplinary issues. According to a recent Yougov survey, pupils lose up to an hour of learning each day because of disruption in classrooms. That’s 38 days of teaching lost per year.
In response to these concerns, an independent Government report, Creating a culture: how school leaders can optimise behaviour, scratched all the familiar itches: the importance of clearly understood rules and sanctions; the importance of internal inclusion units; the place of school charters and whole-school values; and issues relating to technology. But its central message was that schools need effective leaders to create the right culture to improve behaviour. Head teachers who empower their staff can help to improve behaviour in school. The report’s author, Tom Bennett, uses a number of case studies, including Michaela Community School’s boot camp, as well as issues such as staff training, codes of conduct and the consistent application of rules and routines. Two things are apparent from the report – the challenge of being able to select school leaders who can implement change when schools are struggling to find head teachers, and the issue of the time and resources needed to tackle disciplinary issues at a period when schools are under considerable financial pressure. While it is helpful for heads in need of a template for their schools, it has little that is new or revelatory, and does no more than what it says on the box. Therein lies the problem. The report was never intended as a panacea and its limited brief and lack of context only serves to highlight the difficulties facing heads in many underperforming schools, which struggle to give the necessary time to new initiatives, however important they may be. Nor does it address the pressing concerns of the more serious disciplinary breaches facing teachers, leading to internal inclusion or exclusion (the subject of a Government draft paper published in March this year). Nowhere do we read that from April 2015 until the end of 2016, more than 2,579 weapons were seized in schools, including axes and knives. Nor is there any mention of the ATL survey conducted in 2015, revealing that more than 20 per cent of teachers had been subject to false accusations by pupils or parents – a situation that is getting worse. Mention of parents, families and communities, a key constituency in dealing with discipline, appears only on page 58 of a 62-page report, which is far too late.
On behavioural matters, the home-school accord is vital, and yet recent Government reports highlight the breakdown in trust and respect between home and school. The findings of a recent DOE survey that only 53 per cent of teachers felt that parents respected their authority was compounded by teachers’ own criticism of parents, attributing poor discipline at home for the problems surfacing in schools. It is a perfect storm and highlights the fact that even where behaviour is properly managed in the classrooms through appropriate routines and sanctions, in order to be sustainable and enduring, children need to learn self-discipline and self-control, based on values and rules mutually agreed and properly communicated.
Any review on discipline needs to consider the mounting concerns over mental health and be sensitive to any correlation in dealing with errant behaviour. We could ask why it is that schools are places where children have to be rather than want to be. Perhaps, by being forced into a system driven by data and league tables, schools have become adversarial and attritional for too many children who are of different abilities, different skill sets and backgrounds, and who are often bored or unable to express themselves.
To improve behaviour, we should look more closely at the relevance of what we teach to ensure that schools have a better connection with new opportunities and aspirations. Perhaps all the talk of good schools, bad schools and selection exacerbates the problem. Perhaps we should make schools more fit for purpose and counter the academic bias in our curriculum that adversely affects children with learning and behavioural difficulties. Perhaps we should place more emphasis on vocational opportunities and on a broader education.
The fact that we have a generation of anxious, self-harming, depressed children should concern us all and lead us to question whether the atrophying of education and our obsession with measuring only the easily measurable is contributing to a system that works for some, but not for others. For schools to optimise behaviour, perhaps they just need to look out of the classroom, not only for solutions, but also to find the causes.
Any review on discipline needs to consider the mounting concerns over mental health