Ministers declare war on unruly classrooms
MINISTERS will today order a crackdown on the “curse of low-level disruption” in the classroom, which can lead to children losing up to 38 days of learning time every year.
Nicky Morgan, the Education Secretary, will order a review of training programmes across the country to ensure that teachers are able to deal with children using mobile phones in the classroom or distracting other students.
Sources said that for too long student teachers had been learning about “trendy, progressive theories of child- hood development rather than the nitty-gritty of how to deal with youngsters in the classroom”.
Ms Morgan today also sets out plans to reform GCSEs to ensure that England has comparable standards to the bestperforming countries in the world such as Finland, the Netherlands and Switzerland.
Under the reforms, pupils starting secondary school this autumn will be expected to study the key academic subjects forming the English Baccalaureate (Ebacc) at GCSE.
They will be expected to take maths, English, a foreign language, history or geography
and at least one science subject when they begin their GCSE courses in 2018.
The way GCSEs are graded is also changing from A-G ranking to a numbered system, from nine to one, with nine being the top mark.
A “good pass” – currently a C or higher – will be set at grade five under the reforms, representing a “raising of the bar for performance across the board”, the Department for Education said.
Yesterday, Sir Michael Wilshaw, the chief inspector of schools, said that teachers had given up on poor students and were not prepared to “fight the good fight” to help the underprivileged.
ir Michael warned that in some cases teachers were even preventing pupils from taking books home because they feared they would not bring them back.
He said: “What on Earth does that tell us about the culture in that particular institution? What on Earth does it tell us about leaders who are not prepared to fight the good fight on this basic issue?
“How on Earth will we ever begin to address the shocking underachievement of bright youngsters from disadvantaged homes, if we carry on patronising the poor and serving them up with lower expectations?”
Ms Morgan will today say that the Government is committed to “standing up for parents who are concerned their child’s lessons are being undermined by disruptive children”.
Ofsted last year found that children could be losing up to an hour of learning a day because of low-level disruption, the equivalent of 38 days lost every year.
The inspectorate found children were having a significant impact on the learning of others by taking up teachers’ time by playing on mobile phones, swinging on chairs, making silly comments to get attention or passing notes around class. Ms Morgan has drafted in Tom Bennett, a behavioural expert, to develop better training programmes for new teachers on how to tackle the problem. Mr Bennett is a self-styled “behaviour guru” who urges teachers not to be “inconstant or whimsical” when they punish children.
“The sooner they learn that they can’t get away with mucking around, the sooner you get a safe place where everyone’s learning is maximised,” he has previously said.
Ms Morgan said: “Low-level disruption is still the curse of many classrooms across the country.
“We are standing up for teachers by restoring their authority and backing them to get tough on misbehaviour.”
Mr Bennett added: “Behaviour has been the elephant in the classroom for too long, and the amount of learning time lost because of disruption is a tragedy.”