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.

Army style discipline in schools?

The latest news is likely, for some teachers, to bring hope and frustration in equal measure. The BBC reports that the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) is urging the government to:

"adopt a US-style programme which brings ex-servicemen and women back to
school."

Their reasoning?

"...ex-soldiers could have a profound effect on discipline and learning."

Their logic is simple. Ex-soldiers are not intimidated by adrenaline fueled adolescents. Ex-soldiers are statistically more likely to stay in the profession longer. Ex-soldiers are more confident in their moral authority. Ex-solidiers are likely to gain respect, especially from boys, because of their experience in a macho profession.

The implication however is that teachers from other backgrounds may be more intimidated, less likely to stay in the profession, un-confident in their moral authority and less likely to gain the respect of boys.

All in all a description of a teacher worn down by the circumstances of their job day-in day-out.

The Frustration

It is at this point the frustration kicks in. Surely there is a reason why some (perhaps many) teachers might be described in this way - apart from the fact that they don't happen to have spent 10 years in the armed services.

I suggest that many, if not all teachers, could be as effective at maintaining discipline as any ex-serviceman - provided they were given the training, tools and support from their senior management team.

The Hope

Unbelievably the think tank's report also said:

"Whether we like it or not, children from more deprived neighbourhoods often
respond to raw physical power".

One has to wonder what they expect ex-soldiers to do that existing teachers currently do not do. Something highly illegal by the sounds of it. But this may represent a teeny glimmer of light in the area of classroom discipline.

Perhaps new government policies will come down from above, untying the hands of school senior managers and teachers to be more effective. We can only hope.

While none of us would really want to 'bring back the cane' I think the CPS has really hit on the crux of classroom discipline - sometimes what is required is a show of strength - and currently by-and-large, that show of strength is simply not being given.

It really comes right down to behaviourist theory at its most basic level - stimulus response - Stick and Carrot. The problem however is that balance between the two may not be correct, too much carrot and not enough stick for the students who need it most - so it doesn't work effectively. This is a topic all on its own and I will cover it in my next post.

Remove bad teachers?

"Sub-standard teachers should be removed from schools to make way for better colleagues, a key government education adviser has suggested.

"Sir Cyril Taylor said there were about 17,000 "poor" teachers in England. "(BBC)

On the other hand...

"Teacher Frances Gilbert said problems they had to deal with included parents unwilling to accept the disciplining of their child, government paperwork, and head teachers who would not back them up."(BBC)

However while there is unlikely to be agreement about who is to blame, there are some areas against which a teacher's ability may be more easily assessed:

"'Obvious' weaknesses, such as not knowing enough about their subject or being unable to keep control of a class..."(BBC)

So what is this discussion all about? We know the UK has some of the worse qualification stats for adults, we know many students leave the school system with few or no qualifications. But this does seem to be one attempt at placing a large part of the blame on poor teachers.

Sure there are good teachers and bad teachers, but this suggestion from the "key education adviser" misses some other important points - such as the number of teachers leaving the profession because they are "burned out" - such as broken homes - such as poor parenting - such as expulsion/exclusion targets.

It's easy to go teacher bashing, but this is becoming a worrying trend. In fact the problem is not that simple. Yes lets look at the impact of poor teachers, but lets also look at the impact of increasing discipline, of holding parents responsible for their children's behaviour, of holding students themselves responsible for their own learning. This will take a whole society approach, and is much more complex than removing poor teachers.

HAVE YOUR SAY - read what teachers and the public have to say on the issue >