Despite its promise to make ‘education, education, education’ its top priority, schooling under the present government has shown few real signs of improvement. A major problem with it that, if anything, has steadily worsened under the present administration has been pupil disruptiveness.
Today’s papers carry reports that David Bell, Chief Inspector of Schools in England and Wales, has just declared that ‘classroom discipline is worse now than at any point since Labour took office eight years ago. The proportion of secondary schools with good pupil behaviour has fallen from three quarters to two thirds, while 9 per cent have serious discipline problems, compared with 6% in 1997’.
With the imminent prospect of a general election, it seems the government has finally decided to do something about the problem. Reversing its former policy of actively discouraging schools from excluding their disruptive children, Secretary of State for Education, Ruth Kelly, announced last Tuesday schools are now to be allowed and encouraged to adopt a policy of zero tolerance towards them. Schools are to be allowed to expel and refuse to readmit them until judged ready.
The Secretary of State pulled few punches, ’Every teacher knows what [it] is like and every teacher hates it: incessant chattering: calling out in class and answering back; inattention; lateness; leaving the premises without permission; flouting uniform or dress codes; and causing a nuisance to their children in class. ’ If this is what being a member of Opus Dei does to an education minister, all I can say is 'Hallelujah'.
However, and this is a big, big caveat, the Minister indicated schools are to be given only a short and temporary reprieve from the problem. By September 2007, they are expected to have put in place systems to enable their disruptive pupils to be accommodated in school.
A suggestion of what these new systems for tackling disruptive children might be -- and cost – appears in today’ Times. It comes from journalist, Mary Ann Sieghart, who writes, ‘ Where money needs to go is on intensive provision outside the normal classroom for .. challenging children.…And it needs to start early ideally before primary school.‘ So far so good.
But then Ms Sieghart goes on to suggest what special forms of provision should be made. These are simultaneously both so in line with other present government policies, as well as out of touch with the root cause of the problem, one can only despair at what might be in store for the country.
So far as concerns pre-school provision, what Ms Sieghart seems to be after is yet more of what is currently starting to be provided by Sure-Start – viz. more state-funded pre-school nurseries.
As for the early years of schooling, what she claims is wanted for dealing with their disruptive pupils is that they should all install so-called, “nurture groups”. These groups are each to comprise no more than 10-12 disruptive children, staffed by a teacher plus an assistant and are intended to ‘create a more family-like setting in which they could learn social skills and catch up on heir child development’.
In sum, what Ms Sieghart appears to be proposing as the way forward both to prevent and deal with the problem of disruptive young children is ever more institutional care of them in place of care by their parents, but modelled on home care where necessary as a remedial measure.
Adopting this policy can be anticipated to bear ghastly results. It is a demonstrable but uncomfortable fact that, in all but the most expensive nurseries, young children in receipt of such forms of child-care tend to exhibit higher levels of aggression than their counter-parts raised at home by parents, typically their mothers.
It is simply no good for schools to seek to replicate home conditions in dealing with their disruptive children who are likely to have arrived at them with such proclivities because earlier on in their up-bringing they were denied the benefits of proper parenting by being placed in nurseries.
If they are ever to seriously address the root cause of the problem, what is really needed from major political parties is willingness and preparedness to tell the public an awkward truth. This is that the main cause of the high incidence today of delinquency and maladjustment among the young has been a breakdown of the two-parent family, and the traditional sexual division of labour within it, which saw mothers be the primary carers of children during their early years and fathers the main sources of family income.
Until and unless that uncomfortable fact and its implications are acknowledged and faced up to by politicians and public alike, children are liable to continue to grow up ever more maladjusted.
What needs to be given zero-tolerance is the unwillingness of government and public alike to face up to the basic facts about what forms of child-care arrangement best suit very young children- viz full time care by a single adult, ideally their mothers, as well as zero tolerance for refusal by parents and political parties alike to acknowledge the responsibilities of parents and prospective parents that follow from this fact. Among these should be recognition by women that they should not bear children unless and until they are willing and able to give their children such care, and by men that they shouldn't cause women to become pregnant unless and until they are willing and able to assume their attendant obligations towards any children that might result and to the mothers of them during the years of dependency of these children.
Comments (1)
I would suggest that in many cases sheer boredom in class causes many children to be disruptive. They are no longer stretched to their limit but are told to "empathise". Now we hear that homework is to go.
Children are individuals but do not automatically want to learn. The early years should be aimed at teaching these skills but it cannot be done in mixed ability classes. The bright will be bored, the less bright will struggle and with no discipline - chaos.
Posted by Derek Buxton | February 4, 2005 11:55 AM
Posted on February 4, 2005 11:55