Discipline in
Idea that schools shouldn’t be able to expel violent pupils sees ex-headteacher Cameron Wyllie explode with rage
So there I was having my breakfast with the sun streaming in on a fine Joppa morning, listening to John Humphrys on the BBC’S Today programme talking about the terrible cancer of knife crime. He was discussing with a passing sociologist the unsurprising fact that a high proportion of those found guilty of stabbing someone have, at some point, been excluded from school and the crusty old veteran reporter said the most astonishing thing: “Isn’t it time we said to head teachers that they simply can’t exclude anyone from their school?”
The sun went down, the muffin lay bereft in front of me, while I exploded at the radio – surely, I thought, surely he can’t mean that.
He can’t believe that it’s fine for a teacher of say, maths, to look at their class of say, 30 kids, some of whom will have specific learning difficulties which require individual
attention and for that teacher to know that there’s no chance that the really aggressive, possibly bonkers kid sitting at the back, who could be carrying a weapon – for Heaven’s sake – can’t be removed from the school.
Of course head teachers should have the power to have them excluded, so that the other kids can live in an atmosphere free, or at least freer, from fear and intimidation, and the teacher and his pupils have a better chance of getting on with what they are actually there to do, which is, let’s remember, to teach and to learn.
Of course, I accept that criminality is very heavily tied into socioeconomic circumstances, that parental violence breeds violence, that the young people who carry knives need help, but, good grief, ordinary schools are not the place for these cases.
They need care and attention in a different environment, and if I was