Misdiagnosing the Cause of Present-Day Educational Failure
Civitas, 24 February 2009
Alexander, Rose, et al can debate what schools should teach as much as they like, but no amount of tinkering with the National Curriculum will improve academic standards until and unless a far more important cause of poor educational attainment today is addressed.
However much a defective curriculum and associated regime of testing are putting children off from taking an interest in their lessons today, something else is doing so on a much greater scale.
Too many schoolchildren today are being prevented from learning at school by the unacceptably high levels of disruptive and unruly behaviour of their peers.
Consider some startling recent figures:
• 1 in 10 teachers in state schools claim to have been attacked and injured by their pupils.
• Two thirds of 800 teachers surveyed in 2008 believed the behaviour of their pupils was getting worse.
• 3 out of 10 of them claimed to have been physically assaulted by their pupils.
• 75 per cent of them said they had been threatened or insulted by their pupils.
• 2,200 children were sent home every day for disruptive behaviour in 2007-8.
• 4,500 children were transferred from their schools to another in 2007-8.
• A survey of key stage 3 pupils at metropolitan schools found 29 per cent claiming other pupils attempted to disrupt their lessons on a daily basis.
• 43 per cent of children surveyed said other pupils were “always” or “often” so noisy that they found it difficult to work.
One could go on and on. The suggestion that it has been an uninspiring curriculum or over-testing that has caused the misconduct is ludicrous, given how early on in schooling so much of it begins:
• Primary schools barred pupils 46,710 times in 2007.
• More than 3,000 primary school pupils aged four and five were sent home in 2007 for disruptive behaviour.
• 1,540 nursery pupils in England were excluded from school during 2006-7.
• Almost 1,000 of them were suspended for attacking teachers and fellow pupils, and hundreds more barred for verbal abuse and disruptive behaviour.
• 20 children aged two were suspended for physical or verbal assaults.
According to a 2008 study of the behaviour of primary schoolchildren, conducted for the NUT by researchers at Cambridge University, whereas ‘in the 2002 primary survey, classroom disruption was not highlighted as a major problem, five years on, teachers in the same schools regard it as a more significant priority… Even in the early years of primary education, [pupils] were reluctant to follow instructions… and a minority could be extremely confrontational use foul language and could even be physically aggressive.’
None of this early bad behaviour can be attributed to deficiencies in what teachers are attempting to teach pupils; practically all of it can be to lack of proper parental guidance at home. While children from deprived background can be inspired by their teachers, they cannot be whilst disruptive behaviour by peers prevents their teachers from being able to teach them. And there can be little doubt that disruptive behaviour is preventing effective teaching on a big and growing scale. According to the Children’s Society, ‘Disruption in the classrooms is one of the main impediments to learning’.
The vast recent increase in pupil unruliness has taken its toll on the numbers of experienced and qualified teachers prepared or able to face that daily barrage of disruption. Instead, classrooms have increasingly been put in the hands of unqualified and inexperienced stand-ins who are almost certainly guaranteed to be unable to cope with what greets them there.
• In the ten year period between 1997 and 2006, the number of teaching instructors in schools without qualified teaching status more than quadrupled from 1,500 to 6,800.
• During that same period, the number of supply teachers being used has increased to cope with teacher shortages and stress-related teacher absences.
According to Ofsted, discipline in schools deteriorates where teachers do not get to know their pupils properly. Consequently, by causing the increasing substitution of supply teachers in place of permanent qualified teachers, pupil disruptiveness is self-reinforcing.
I do not have any remedies to propose for improving parental guidance and care, beyond the usual nostrums about the advantages of children, especially boys, growing up in the presence and under the guidance of their fathers. However, it seems to me that public money could well be currently being misspent on a grand scale, if it is being used in an attempt to improve schooling before or without due effort being made to address the problem of poor parenting.
What is the point of forcing children to stay on in full-time education, when so many of their schools will simply be black-board jungles?
No wonder as many as 25,000 fourteen year olds are reportedly dropping out of school today? Wouldn’t you be inclined to, if you were unable to learn anything there and lived in constant fear of being bullied or harassed by fellow pupils?
Most white working class ………. suffer from an (indefinite article) Identity Crises because their teachers have been mis-educated and de-educated by state schools and leftist ideologues sympathetic to the demolition of British culture including recognition of the traditional family as the most stabilising and influential social unit. Since fathers are primarily responsible for the education and discipline of their children they are the main target of leftist educationalists; so our state primary schools are the ultimate “girls world”. Add to this a dogma of “inclusion” and you are bound to end up with what we have now come to. The article is spot on; we cannot possibly teach when we do not have the option to exclude. It is time to say no to the dogma that state education is a “right”. Let state education become an option for those who are prepared to take advantage of the opportunity and let’s find some alternatives for the increasing army of lumpen disfunctionals who disrupt and demoralise our best children.
“English is our economic language while Arabic and Urdu is our social, emotional and spiritual languages.”
This would be a perfectly reasonable view if applied to Muslims living in Muslim countries. Like any other racial/ethnic group, Muslims need to preserve their own culture, a key part of which is language. However, given the ubiquity of English in the business world, it would make economic sense to learn English.
Applied, however, to immigrant Muslims in the UK, your view is depressingly insular and largely unhelpful. In the UK, Muslims are a minority. The national language is English. Integration of immigrant Muslims into mainstream British society fundamentally depends on them being able to speak the national language. Therefore, British Muslims must consider English their social and emotional language too.
“They need to learn standard English to follow the National Curriculum and go for higher studies and research to serve humanity. They need to learn and be well versed in Arabic, Urdu and other community languages to keep in touch with their cultural roots and enjoy the beauty of their literature and poetry.”
I agree on both points but the latter is the not the responsiblity of state-funded education, at least not in a secular country in which Muslims are very much a minority.
If immigrant Muslim parents wish for their children to keep in touch with their cultural roots, it is their responsibility to ensure they do so. Either educate them in your own time or establish privately funded schools to do so. If the aim of the government is to create a truly inclusive, multicultural society (and that appears to be their aim) why would they use public money to fund schools that encourage a particular racial/ethnic group to separate itself rather than integrate?
Iftikar. It is good that people paid no attention to your campaign. Why should people settle here and demand that sectarian schools should be set up for them paid for by the public purse? If they wish to settle here they should assimilate and integrate. Not to do so is the height of bad manners. I cannot imagine millions of British Christians trying to settle in Pakistan let alone demanding that the government should establish and fund Christian schools for them. Even if they did I cannot imagine their request being granted. Nor can I imagine you demanding that they should be accommodated.
What arrogance to demand that schools with a Muslim majority be designated Muslim schools.
Why is it that Muslims are having such identity crises? Sikhs, Hindus, Parsees, Jews, Hugeneots and others have managed to find their place and fit in OK. If Pakistani Muslims cannot I suggest they go home.
One thing that might help Muslims to settle in is to follow the example of Jews. Like many Christian churches they pray weekly for Queen. Maybe mosques should only be allowed to open on condition that prayers are regularly said for the reigning monarch.
I started teaching in 1994 and there hasn’t been a change in the profile of children’s behaviour since then. In fact even then many school’s were failing their pupils – the problem is that the problem hasn’t been addressed and is widely misunderstood. If we just blame parents then we ignore everything schools do to encourage the problem.
Iftikhar’s submission is enlightening. His ideas will do much for integration (not) and if his views are typical (I guess they are obligatory), one really wonders why Muslims bother to come to this country at all. His command of English is clearly suspect (what is a ‘HOLLY Quran’?) and at least one of your other contributors struggles with the correct use of ‘there’ and ‘their’.
I know these criticisms may seem unkind, but my point is that after years of ‘education, education, education’, the standard of English used today is dreadful.
Even that used by so-called qualified professionals is ambiguous, mis-spelled, gramatically inept and full of the Greengrocers’ apostrophe.
As for discipline in schools, it is obvious that if family break up is encouraged to the extent that it is, and rules, boundaries and discipline are things of the past, we should not be surprised that such a society is now breeding a nation of yobs and thugs.
When I was at school we were expected to wait lined up outside the classroom, enter when we were told and stand quietly until bidden to sit down. We then worked in peace and quiet.
Now it is chaos. Why? What on earth can be the benefit in that for anyone?
Surely only a fool stands in front of a class of secondary kids these days.
Matt, the family structure has changed hugely with the increased proportion of children of unmarried mothers, divorced parents, step-parents, in care and other permutations. Such children are often emotionally and psychologically damaged and bring there resentments and anger problems into the school. There are also more children having sexual affairs which mostly breakup in a painful way. There is also the issue of declining social skills that goes along with computer addiction never mind its affect of their cognitive abilities. So all this has contributed to the decline in the quality of school children today.
Of course government interference is also the bane of schools and teachers.
Most British Muslims are under 25. They suffer from Identity Crises including Ed Husain, because they have been mis-educated and de-educated by state schools with non-Muslim monolingual teachers. Imams and Masajid have done a wonderful job by teaching Muslim children the Holly Quran and some basic Islamic traditions and rituals. But that is not enough. The first wave of Muslim migrants arrived with their cultures, languages and faith. Majority of British Muslims are from Pakistan and this is the main reason why majority of Masajid were set up by the Pakistanis with their own Imams from Pakistan who are well versed in Arabic, Urdu and Persian and lot of them also well versed in English. They deliver lectures in Arabic and Urdu and will keep on delivering in those languages. English is our economic language while Arabic and Urdu is our social, emotional and spiritual languages. I have been campaigning for state funded Muslim schools with bilingual Muslim teachers for the last 35 years so that Muslim children could be well versed in English, Arabic, Urdu and other community languages. They need to learn standard English to follow the National Curriculum and go for higher studies and research to serve humanity. They need to learn and be well versed in Arabic, Urdu and other community languages to keep in touch with their cultural roots and enjoy the beauty of their literature and poetry. But unfortunately, no body paid any attention to my proposal in the beginning. I set up the first Muslim schools in 1981 and now there are 166 Muslim schools and only ten are state funded. Less than 5 % of Muslim children are in Muslim schools while 96 % are still mis-educated and de-educated in state and Church schools with those teachers who are not role models for them. There are hundreds of state and Church schools where Muslim children are in majority. In my opinion all such schools may be designated as Muslim community schools so that young Muslim children could feel pride in their culture, languages and faith. Iftikhar Ahmad
http://www.londonschoolofislamics.org.uk
This is not due to a change in the behaviour which children bring into schools (parenting has not changed significantly over the last decade to explain this). Also most disruption and abuse occurs by children who never misbehave at home. What has changed are ‘societies rules’ that schools have to operate under defined top-down by the interpretation and application of law and ‘expectations’ from Government (e.g. DCSF Circulars). Many parents are unaware how bad things are even in so called ‘good’ schools – the lowering of exam standards has partly hidden this, the rest of the obfuscation is by senior management in schools who will endeavor hush up all negative comment.
I agree with your assessment and your conclusions, I think the answer to some of what you say, may also lie in the government’s training programme for teachers where in an extraordinarily convoluted way, the plain facts, more or less as you describe them, are reinterpretted into perverse descriptions of the pupil as “victim”; victim of aggressive teachers (sic) , victim of knowledge being forced on them (teaching), and other fictions, along with a whole load of “remedies” , which essentially amount to a strange form of abject grovelling of guilty middle class teachers to working class children, which of course earns them nothing but the contempt it deserves. When the ideologues who have dominated education policy for decades leave teachers to teach and to discipline children in accordance with something resembling common sense, schools will be once again be able to benefit the less well off, and even those who suffer from bad parenting. Of course though, as you say, the parenting problem is at least as crucial. I do think the strange (vaguely Maoist) government training, with all its jargon and slogans and distortions, which teachers are forced to learn and to parrot, deserves detailed examination by an organisation such as Civitas. Parents are largely unaware of what is going on.