The chalk lines down the middle of the table tennis table were unclear. We agreed on that. I did not, however, accept that it had been necessary to scratch out new ones with the bat. Now, was Ed going to hand me the bat in front of his peers and sit out the next game as I demanded? We did not have to wait long for an answer. He hurled the bat across a crowded room and stormed out, telling us all to "fuck ourselves." Then he put his fist through the glass window in the hall.
Bad behaviour in British secondary schools is one reason why the progress in raising standards-especially among working-class boys-has been so much harder than at primary level. Forty-five per cent of teachers leaving the profession say disruptive behaviour is one of their main reasons for doing so. Teaching unions say there has been a big increase in concern over pupil behaviour in the last 15 years, at a time when the general drift has been away from the more laissez-faire attitudes of the 1960s and 1970s. The government has taken note. Last year, Stephen Twigg, junior schools minister, said "behaviour is at the core of many of the challenges facing us, including how to retain and employ the best teachers." Charles Clarke, the education secretary, has launched a behaviour and attendance strategy costing ?470m over three years. His plans include placing greater responsibility for attendance on parents and stronger discipline sanctions.
The emphasis on exclusion and discipline is a reversal from 1997. Then the stress was on the negative consequence of school exclusion and how it contributed to youth crime. David Blunkett, education secretary in Labour's first term, decided that exclusion should drop by a third. He published the infamous circular 10/99, designed to make exclusions more difficult. Exclusions did drop-from 12,700 in 1997 to 8,600 in 2000. But this reduction was achieved partly by effectively reducing headteachers' powers of exclusion. Pupils were sometimes readmitted on appeal, thus undermining those staff who had pushed for exclusion and emboldening already difficult children. One famous case involved two pupils who had left 40 death threats on a teacher's telephone answering machine. After being expelled by the headteacher, they were readmitted on appeal. It is extreme cases such as this, and the fact that a third of newly qualified teachers are leaving the profession after three years, that have prompted the change of heart. Annual exclusions are now back up over 9,000.
Why do so many schoolchildren behave badly? The broader cultural and family background is clearly a factor, albeit an unquantifiable one. The combination of an "instant gratification" mass culture and more unstable families has led to rising insecurity and aggression in some children. High teacher turnover in key subjects reinforces the emotional instability of many modern families. Moreover, parents themselves have become more aggressive towards teachers and other authority figures; consider the increased assaults on GPs.
Pamela Coward, head of Middleton technology school in Manchester, (who became a Dame of the British Empire in the June honours list for services to education) expresses the problem tersely: "The challenge really is to eradicate street values from the school." Bob Carstairs, of the Secondary Heads Association, stresses home environment as the biggest problem: "There is a significant increase in the number of children not supervised by family adults." This, he said, means that many children do not know how to behave. Public money to tackle poor behaviour was welcome, but the basic problem, he said, is "cultural."
This attitude is understandable but depressing. It makes the situation appear impossible to tackle. Fortunately there are several examples of teachers who took on a school filled with children from the worst social and emotional backgrounds and succeeded. Ex-headmistress Marie Stubbs, for example, was encouraged out of retirement to tackle the problems of St George's school in west London. Since an earlier head, Philip Lawrence, had been fatally stabbed outside its gates in 1995, the school had deteriorated. In early 2000, just before Stubbs joined, the local authority closed it for a week. They felt unable to ensure the safety of either staff or pupils.
Stubbs has written a book, Ahead of the Class, about her 15 months as head of the school, after which time the school received a glowing Ofsted report. She describes her central principle thus: "A child may come to a school of mine with baggage, but at 9am they should be able to lay that baggage aside and be their best selves for the rest of the day. None of us can control what happens to them outside school, but inside it they should have the best experience they can."
In an attempt to raise expectations at her previous school she offered subjects such as Mandarin, for those planning to work at Heathrow airport. In parallel to raising expectations, she has a policy of strict adherence to rules. She says that once basic rules-such as correct uniform and running in corridors-are not enforced, it sends a message to pupils about who is in charge. The rules at St George's had slipped before she arrived, affecting the whole atmosphere.
In Southwark in south London, Kingsdale school has gone from being a failing school to being described as the most improved school in the country. It has even won the praise of Chris Woodhead, the ex-chief inspector of schools: "Boundaries were marked; expectations were articulated with crystal clarity. Once children know where they stand, they are happier and willing to learn."
Kingsdale has brought in outside agencies to tackle the most serious instances of misbehaviour, a novel step which schools are starting to take. The NUT recently endorsed a call for "bouncers" who could "come in if a child became uncontrollable, to take them out to calm down." This already happens in France, where many schools have "discipline managers" who are called to remove students from class.
Norman Warner, former chairman of the youth justice board, believes it is important to introduce more adults into schools-including police officers-who are trained to deal with difficult children. "Having a policeman at the school lowers the temperature and calm things down," he said. The youth justice board has introduced a safer school partnership scheme which brings the police and schools together. The government is watching it closely.
Both Kingsdale and St George's offer positive examples of how seemingly hopeless situations can be turned around. They are, of course, exceptions, as are the truly awful schools where bad behaviour makes it hard for most pupils to learn. But is the overall behaviour trend getting better or worse? My impression (see also Graham Bowley, page 45) is that the incidence of violence has not changed dramatically over the last 20 years. It is still quite rare in all but the roughest schools. However, teachers who have taught during this period often complain about a continuing decline in respect. Swearing at teachers for example, has become depressingly normal.
I can vouch for that from my own experience at a comprehensive school in East Anglia. Here are just a few incidents from one week this year: a pupil who had been excluded for two days wandered into my classroom and in full view of the class made rude gestures at me; I was referred to as "a thing" by a 13-year-old girl; another pupil told me to "shut my fucking mouth"; there were many instances of students telling me to shut up, go away and mind my own business; a 15-year-old boy became so enraged after being asked to stay five minutes into break that he went to the back of the room and broke the lock on the double doors, shouting, "Just let me out of this fucking room! For fuck's sake let me out!"
My current school failed its Ofsted inspection earlier this year (as did 3 per cent of schools inspected in 2001-2). The inspectors told us what the staff and students already knew. There are a number of good departments in the school, and some excellent teachers, who create an environment in which students of all abilities progress. However, there are simply too many unsatisfactory lessons in maths and science. Recent GCSE results have improved. But closer inspection shows that this is due to an increasing number of students taking non-core subjects. Maths, English and science results continue to deteriorate.
The shortage of good teachers in the core subjects is still one of the biggest problems in British education, especially in greater London. Twenty-nine per cent of GCSE physics teachers do not have an A-level in the subject. At my previous school in a London suburb, which was not considered tough, a maths teacher from Romania who barely spoke English was employed. She quit after two days. A-level biology students had no teacher for the three months prior to their exams. The English department advertised for two terms without receiving one suitable applicant.
When maths, science, and increasingly, English too, are staffed by supply and foreign teachers, behaviour problems are bound to be exacerbated. In 2001 there were almost 20,000 supply teachers in England-nearly 5 per cent of the teaching workforce and twice as many as in 1995. These teachers do not know the children or the school or, sometimes, even the country: nearly 6,000 work permits were issued to teachers from non-EU countries in 2001. The pupils, who suspect that teachers will soon move on, or who find it hard to understand their English, often resent them. The lack of discipline within these lessons reverberates through the rest of the school.
I recall one especially depressing incident when I was working as a teaching assistant. A recently arrived, elderly and dignified South African found it impossible to contain the noise or the throwing of pens. He turned to the board and reiterated an equation he was trying to explain. I did not know whether I should try to stop the commotion, help the few pupils attempting to learn, or leave to fetch the head of science. Before I could decide, a pencil case struck a row of specimen jars on a shelf with a loud crash, spilling their formaldehyde, which can cause a severe skin rash, over several of the girls sitting nearby. The fire service was called, the area cordoned off, and the students washed down before being handed white boiler suits in which to travel home or to hospital.
These South African tea-chers are often fleeing violence. The irony of their predicament once they enter the classroom is not lost on them. "We are a third-world country, but you have third-world education," said one South African music teacher. "I taught in a black township for 15 years. We had almost no equipment and the class was double this size, but there was always respect for the teachers and when I spoke-silence. This is madness." She left after one term to be replaced by another South African, who also lasted just a term. The many Australian supply teachers are often equally bemused. One said to me recently: "In Australia, this school would be in the bottom 5 per cent. Here it seems to be just normal."
It is important in the barrage of such views to remind yourself that things are not all bad. All political parties now recognise the depth of the discipline problem and Labour is investing a lot of public money in trying to improve it. Moreover, most schools have a vibrant energy. Often after an especially bad lesson I will walk around the playground during break, lapping up greetings, smiles and questions. Children contain a spark that is yet to be dimmed by responsibilities. And contributing to a good set of exam results provides a real sense of achievement. Even in the toughest schools there are teachers conducting classes in front of calm, responsive pupils who are enthusiastic about learning. But too often these pupils know that opportunities for mayhem exist down the corridor later in the day.
Once, when I followed a class all day, a precocious 12 year old told me, as he packed his books after the second lesson, "that's the last bit of work for the day."
"What?"
"Well, geography and English have good, strict teachers whom we work for, but nobody does anything in the other classes."
"Why don't you try to achieve something in your other classes rather than wasting your time? You've clearly got satisfaction out of working in this one."
"Nah, bollocks to that."
And so it was. This boy marked his arrival at the next lesson by standing in the doorway and hurling his bag towards a chair at the back. The teacher anxiously checked that no one had been hit by the bag and seemed to consider a reprimand, before shrinking from the volley of abuse that this would inevitably entail.
The vast majority of pupils do want to progress at school. But many will misbehave as soon as their concentration slackens. If work is too difficult or boring teachers will have trouble retaining control-or at least many of them will; there is, of course, a wide ability range among teachers in classroom control. There are, however, two relatively small policy revisions which could significantly raise the average standard. First, although more flexibility has been allowed into the national curriculum in recent years teachers still have too little opportunity to run with ideas. This makes it especially hard to reach early teenage working-class boys, the group most subject to the tyranny of peer pressure.
Second, there is far too little training in classroom discipline given to students of the postgraduate certificate of education (a common route into teaching). My PGCE consisted of about six weeks of lectures and group work at college, and then two terms of teaching in two schools. The lectures were concerned primarily with the theory of history teaching: how to incorporate empathy, interpretation and historical inquiry into lessons. But from the moment we trainee teachers entered the classroom, our main problem was discipline. Once you "die" in front of a class, or reveal your fear, it is very hard to restore your authority. Yet, apart from two lectures and a few handouts-one including a section titled: "What to do when your arrival in the class is met with derision"-we received virtually no guidance. I got the impression that our tutors felt the issue of discipline was below them; they were historians, not behavioural psychologists. A friend who took a PGCE elsewhere had similar complaints: "We had one lecture on discipline, and then it was trial and error in the classroom." Yet the distilled wisdom of generations of teachers could easily be turned into classroom techniques-tricks even-that trainees could apply in their teaching practice posts.
Older teachers can have an advantage over younger ones, even if they are new to the profession. Chris Asbury, a language teacher at the Clarendon school in Trowbridge, became a teacher when he was 38. "I did not always find discipline easy but it was easier for me than for many others-in your late thirties you have more presence than a 22 year old out of college," he says. He thinks it would be sensible to try to attract more mature people into teaching.
Providing young teachers with more advice and support over discipline and allowing all teachers to apply the national curriculum more imaginatively could have a big impact on behaviour in schools. However, a small minority of pupils would still create difficulties. Estelle Morris, the former education secretary, said last year that the biggest obstacle to improving standards in schools was "two badly behaved students in a class." By removing two or three, a class can be transformed. Tentative children will speak out, potentially disruptive children will buckle down rather than play up to their friends, and teachers can spend time with those students who find the work difficult. With disruptive students present, class discussion is harder and teachers will spend most of their time ensuring that difficult pupils are "on task."
What should be done with this hardcore of disruptive or violent pupils? A generation ago violence would have been used by teachers themselves to quell troublemakers. That is, rightly, no longer possible. But there is a consensus among politicians and teacher unions that exclusion, properly managed, is a necessary weapon in handling bad behaviour. Pupils who persist in being violent or rude should be removed from the classroom.
My own experience is that throwing pupils out of the school completely can be bad for morale and damaging to parent-teacher relations-it can also attract legal action from disgruntled parents. Trevor Averre-Beeson, who at 35 became the youngest headteacher in the country, agrees. When he moved to the famously troubled Islington Green school in north London last year, he brought with him a policy of not excluding pupils. In the term before he joined there had been 150 exclusions; in Averre-Beeson's first term there were six. In place of exclusion he introduced two tactics. Tactic one: the "internal exclusion unit"-an empty room in which a student works throughout the day. They are given the same work as the other students, and if it is not completed receive detentions and continued exclusions. This is rarely necessary-they usually get on with the work because there is nothing else to do. Tactic two: staff training in "assertive discipline"-an American programme which involves halting the unproductive battle of wills that often occurs within a class. Rather than aggressively interrogating pupils about their behaviour, teachers are encouraged to phrase their questions in a positive assertive manner, and to remain calm and polite at all times. Averre-Beeson aims not only to change behaviour, but also to alter the atmosphere of the school-and he seems to be having some success.
All schools have different strategies for dealing with extreme behaviour. Some send pupils to neighbouring schools for a period. But over 1,000 secondary schools (out of a total of 3,500) now have learning support units (LSUs) where disruptive pupils can be helped by specialists without having to leave the school grounds. The two comprehensive schools I taught in had recently built LSUs. The advantage of these units is that pupils with learning difficulties can be removed from lessons that they find particularly difficult, to spend time working on their specific problems; also, pupils who disrupt lessons have somewhere they can go to cool down. But LSUs also have disadvantages. Both teachers and pupils use them as a way of avoiding difficult issues. Pupils stop attending lessons they do not like, going to LSUs instead. Teachers, relieved at their absence, do not ask questions. A two-tier system can build up in the school, with difficult pupils forgotten.
Schools get financial support for difficult pupils who need LSUs, but this money is withdrawn for pupils who are excluded from school altogether. (This withdrawal of funds is naturally unpopular with schools.) About 10,000 of the country's most difficult pupils are now registered at one of the 385 pupil referral units (PRUs)-special schools designed to educate children who cannot be accommodated at their usual institution. Such fully excluded pupils used to receive no more than a few hours' tuition a week and would be left to roam the streets-often getting involved in petty crime-the rest of the time. Such pupils now spend about 25 hours a week under supervision in PRUs, although a recent Ofsted report questioned the quality of PRU education. PRUs are run by local education authorities, but the work is sometimes contracted out to voluntary bodies, including church groups. These groups can be impressively committed to the task of sorting out troubled children. This is a field in which the government is keen to see the voluntary sector becoming more involved.
There is not much that governments can do about the big cultural factors underlying bad behaviour in schools. But even in an anti-authoritarian age, schools should be able to offer the security, discipline and stimulation which disaffected young people need. To ensure that this is more often the case, schools need a core of committed teachers with the training to command a class and the freedom to inspire it. Is that too much too ask?
