Hoorah for Knighted Head Teacher - Now untie the hands of the rest of us...

In this years list of knighthoods is included the Head Teacher of Robert Clack School in Dagenham, Paul Grant. I for one applaud this move. He certainly deserves it if the achievements reported by the BBC are anything to go by:

Head teacher Paul Grant is credited with restoring discipline to a failing Essex secondary school.

In his first week as head teacher at Robert Clack School in Dagenham, Mr Grant excluded 300 pupils in a drive to consistently enforce discipline.

But last year the proportion of students achieving five or more good GCSEs was just above the average and the government named it as one of 12 schools "excelling against the odds".
(BBC)

Wonderful. If 300 students need excluding for their behaviour then yes, the Head Teacher should be allowed to exclude them.

Unfortunately many Heads are not taking this kind of action, even on a much smaller scale. Some cite targets to reduce exclusions and expulsions for this, but whatever the reason, to fail to consistently enforce discipline is to fail every student at the most basic level.

If targets really are preventing Heads taking action, then they should ignore them and enforce discipline anyway. Why wait until 300 need excluding in one week? There is no excuse for that.