On Friday, OfSTED announced that - put crudely - boring lessons and boring teachers are to blame for unruly behaviour in schools – not class size, an over-stuffed and over-prescribed curriculum and demoralised teachers. A crude synopsis of the report but not as crude as OfSTED's assessment of the situation. In light of the way in which government directives have straitjacketed teachers via OfSTED, forcing them to follow often inappropriate and un-engaging curricula and positively disallowing any room for tailoring classes to pupils, the inspectorate’s conclusion is as unpalatable as it is crude. Giving pupils ‘wider choice’ in the curriculum, say OfSTED, is the key to better behaviour. If only schools were able to. What is more, the climax of the injustice accompanies OfSTED’s observation that those schools with a high teacher-turnover are the ones with the worst behaviour. Whilst this is surely true, OfSTED seems to be blaming the wrong party. Retention survey after retention survey has shown us that it is the incessant pressure to produce reams of paperwork and fulfil endless tick-box criteria – activities enforced by OfSTED - that is driving teachers out at alarming rates. Public criticism of OfSTED’s conclusions in the report Improving Behaviour came in the form of comebacks from the teaching unions. Steve Sinnott, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers made a cutting retort: ‘It is difficult to understand how OfSTED has come to this conclusion when it does not measure the quality of teaching during inspections.’ Yet interestingly, the NUT did not point the finger at OfSTED’s straitjacketing as a contributor to poor pupil behaviour, going on only to say: ‘Bad pupil behaviour is not determined by a single factor. Frustration at the curriculum is not an excuse for disrupting lessons and OfSTED is wrong to suggest it is.’