How should schools deal with disruptive kids? Tell us your experiences?

In today's Times you can read about how different schools deal with difficult and disruptive pupils and of a new Ofsted report which contains some very wise, and some might say, obvious, information.

The new report is concerned with young children (under 7) and says that the school's attitude is key. Crucially it points out that children know how to behave well. What schools therefore need is guidance and support and a range of strategies to deal with problem behaviour (which usually has a root cause, often stemming from circumstances at home). That way they can help the children to change, and these young kids won't get labelled/expelled or find their lives irreparably damaged before they've even gone into the juniors.

A few months ago I asked "how dangerous are the under 5's?" This was following the publication of statistics showing that many children of this very young age were being excluded from school or nursery.

Much of what I wrote then is relevant now, with these slightly older children. "These young children, and their parents, need help and support, before it all spirals out of control. The children themselves are not solely responsible for their actions." Ofsted clearly sees this too, but schools/teachers, parents and local authorities all need to work together to help children before it's too late. And that means emotional and financial support and, in many cases, a new attitude.

Let School Gate know what you think of the behaviour of young children? Is it worse then in your day or are you just wearing rose-tinted glasses? Are you concerned about your children or did you receive valuable help when you were having problems? Many School Gate parents may be far more concerned about their children not mixing with disruptive and difficult pupils and simply want them removed. Is that really a solution for society as a whole?

I'd be really interested to know your stories.

Update: read School Gate's latest post on one way to deal with difficult children...

Read School Gate:

How dangerous are the under-5s?

Is setting by ability the best way to teach?

The thorny issue of expulsions

Comments

[L J S]

The priority must always be the majority of teachable children.

[Ragster]

For the good of the majority, get the disruptive kids out of the classroom.
It may well be better for the excluded ones too, so long as it isn't a holiday.

However, until parents take responsibility for the behaviour, instead of making excuses, blaming schools, or having no interest, I doubt things will improve much.
Parents have more influence on how teachable their children are than anyone else.

[Kim]

Years ago, I was chair of a governing body at a primary school where we decided to exclude an extremely disruptive 10 year old boy. He'd been hugely disruptive since the day he started, and on one occasion threw a chair at a teacher.

Having said that, I think there must surely be other ways of dealing with troublesome four and five year olds. It's hugely difficult for the school if the child hasn't been brought up properly at home, but an internal exclusion unit or one-to-one sessions with a child psychologist is a better (if more expensive) approach, if you genuinely want to tackle the problem.

[Kim]

I think the key problem is here: "Schools/teachers, parents and local authorities all need to work together to help children before it's too late."

The trouble is, you won't get parents to help if they are the root cause of the child's bad behaviour, which is very often the case. Sometimes parents will get angry with teachers who try to discipline their child. It makes life very difficult for the school - not to mention the other children.

[Charlotte]

Until we stop idiots having children and allow teachers to punish bad behaviour there is no hope.

[Gavin Allen]

Wild rabbits don't breed tame ones !!!!!

It's not rocket science, kids pick up behaviour good or bad from what they see around them.
if they are in a home environment of feckless parents with no respect for each other, the kids are never going to have respect fro themselves or others.
It's so easy to point at schools, friends etc, but good behaviour starts at home.

[BD]

In order to see the dangers of labelling' children read the report from the Joseph Rowntree Trust on database issues

[Stuart Cranney]

At what point did it become the responsibility of the school to sort out the behaviour of children? The sole people to blame are the parents and the kids themselves and I do not appriciate having my taxes being spent on 'shiny new initiatives' that take the schools' focus away from education.

[Jane]

Bring back special schools, with trained teachers and helpers to assist these kids.

Once, children like this would have been taught separately to their benefit and everyone else's. Now "Inclusion" and "Mixed Ability" teaching is ruining the majority's right to a decent education.

If this cannot be done then it brings us back to the question of Setting. Disruptive and challenging children must be educated in a different manner to others and away from the mainstream until they are fit for society.

Oh and while we're at it send the parents to special classes as well, they obviously need help.

[paul]

this is totaly the fault of parents and there attitude .and the pc tree huggin brigade

[j]

My disabled child is at special school and many other children are there, not because they are disabled, but because they are disruptive beyond normal limits.

It is much less humiliating for the child to be at school with other kids who occasionally lose it, and not the class demon.

Interestingly, these very violent and naughty kids are charming to my disabled son and look after him very well. They like having someone more vulnerable than themselves to care for.

My only worry is that their exam results will be rubbish if they stay too long. But then they would have been rubbish anyway.

I think inclusive education is fine up to age 11 but at secondary level schools should specialise.

[Richard]

If we're investing in 1-1 help etc for disruptive kids - I'd rather the extra money went in educating the 95% well behaved ones.

[Novi]

My sister has taught primary for over 30yrs now. My favourite story of hers is how recently a little girl arrived in P1 suckling her dummy. When asked by the teacher to remove it, the little girl did not comply. However, after much coaxing she took her dummy out of her mouth and told the teacher to " F**k Off ", and then promptly reinserted her dummy back into her mouth.
I love that story,- it conjures up images of the baby in the Simpsons.
Anyway, behaviour like this is not for our schools to sort out. they are far too down the line. This is just the results of our broken society. There is no punishment for ill deeds, only rehabilitation.
It all started when fathers were castrated by the family courts, and all respect for authority was ended.
So there you have it. The first cracks in our utopean matriarchial society have appeared.

[Paul]

What the children like is the reaction they get when messing everything up and this also deflects from other problems like not being able to read. Therefore put them into a special reading unit until the boredom forces them to behave

[derrick thorn]

Its so easy .Schools should employ do gooders who have brought this situation into the schools. If they cant make the children behave then sack them and make sure they have a truthful reference so they never again try to install unworkable rules on schools.

[Clive]

Bring back the special schools. There was one in my village I recall. The kids used to wear wooden clogs and do hard labour under strict discipline. I bet they didn't want to come back there. The stick is necessary as well as the carrot.

[Nigel]

Oh, Thank God almost all these people can see the problem clearly. Are the politicians blind, stupid or ignorant?

[Claire]

In the past 30 years, huge changes have affected our society which have not been addressed within the school system. Divorce rates have soared, we have switched from a mostly (male centred) manufacturing to mostly (female centred) service based industrial base. We have accepted several waves of immigrants from warzones. Childcare has become institutionalised from a very early age (3 months plus in some cases). Children lead sedentary, over-stimulated lives in front of screens. Children have very little access to unsupervised, unstructured, physical play. Mental disorders ranging from depression to autistic disorders have grown rapidly.

And sorry, but a couple of rotten, foul-mouthed parents are not responsible for all this!

Discipline is part of the answer. Many of the above factors lead to a breakdown in stability and confidence in a child (leading to disruptive behaviour) and therefore schools need to have very strong, rigid, predictable structures. Also, schools need access to far more resources to help disruptive children. This should range from specialist teachers (e.g. ASD teachers), regular psychological input and additional teaching assistants where 1 disruptive child is preventing 28 from learning. The cost of an additional teaching assistant may be high but it will surely be lower than the cost of 1 hugely disruptive child making his or her way through our society.

And the really difficult one is this: allowing disruptive children room to roam. It may be an unwelcome surprise to many people that disruptive kids often become very high achievers in later life once their energy and drive has found a focus. Schools are curriculum focussed and have to push for homogenous skills amongst their pupils but a more diverse set of options from an early age would allow many disruptive kids to develop self esteem and focus through achievement instead of always feeling bad about under-achievement.

And finally - to all the posters saying nasty things about parents they've never met: are your lifestyles blameless? I've seen the parents of easygoing, non-disruptive kids behave in the most immature, selfish manner within the schoolground. I've observed them bullying teachers, spreading gossip, undermining other children's achievements etc; So lay off 'bad' parents who are few and far between and thank your lucky stars if you have easy-going kids.

[Lord Onion]

Bring back the slipper - you can't beat the deterrent of a good slipper across the back side. I was terrified of it in the 70's - I did once get it unfortunately for playing cards...which I thought was grossly unfair.

[Rosemary]

"one-to-one sessions with a child psychologist"
Maybe, but what these children need is NOT yet another adult asking them WHY they behave badly. They need strict discipline, up to and including corporal punishment if all else fails, and they need to be interested in their school work. The first step here is to make sure they can read fluently. Nothing else is so important. Putting that together, one-on-one reading lessons with a strict disciplinarian that continue until they give in and buckle down. Then you can build on their sense of achievement.

[Jane2]

I was a school governor for many years. At the primary school, where I served from 1989 to 1993, I served for four years without dealing with a single exclusion.

I served at a secondary school for 8 years, between 1998 and 2006.

What I noticed in the latter school was that exclusions became more common over time. I also noticed that when the generation of children who entered primary school in 1997, under the Labour government, started secondary in about 2003, discipline problems suddenly increased dramatically. A whole new discipline policy had to be introduced, constantly refined, and exclusion units installed in school for the first time.

I interpret these results as showing
(i) the damage done by Labour to education in general, possibly by constantly changing the goalposts, and certainly by introducing the International Bill of Human Rights. I kid you not: pupils quoted their "rights" when asked to pick up litter as a punishment sanction, and it became impossible to use detention.

(ii) the general attitude of entitlement engendered by the benefits culture which has burgeoned under Labour. Where there is no self-discipline in the parents (for example, parents who depend on keeping their job in order to eat, will generally observe the niceties towards their employer), there is no self-discipline or respect for others in the children.

Sorry to sound so political, but I speak as I see.

[Devils advocate]

Fence off an area - say Wales or the Wash and then put all the disruptive kids and gobby parents in there "to roam" and become high achievers. No Sky TV - no video games and nothing but having to grow your own food to keep em coming. Review cases once a year to see if they can conform.

[Charmaine]

The answer to bad behaviour among children is ensure that there is a good deterrant to bad behaviour. A good hiding when required works wonders, and definitely beats all the empty threats parents are reduced to.

Children these days are very aware that they are safe from anything worse than a shouting match with mom or in the rare cases where the father is still around, with dad. There is never any fear of actually being punished for wrong-doing.

A trip to the head-master or head-mistress's study in the old days was a very real threat, and you were very aware that you would come back with beaten hands or a beaten backside. It sure stopped you repeating the crime. Bring back corporal punishment!

[Amabel]

My best friend gave me a black eye with a lunchbox when I was in Reception... does that count as delinquent behaviour or just a one-off emotional outburst (we remained best friends)?

How about schools devote timetable space each week to an etiquette lesson? I know schools are already stretched for time to fit everything in, so how about this is part of a radical shakeup of exactly what is included in state education?

[Jim - Herts]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here we go again. It`s always "beat the brats harder" and/or "blame the parents". You gotta love the "self appointed experts" - as if it was all that simple. But I suppose it`s easy and doesn`t involve much in the way of thinking or effort, so perhaps it`s understandable. So if hard discipline is actually counter-probuctive and the parents have tried everything and are pulling their hair out about trying to sort things, because all they want is a "normal" life - what next? And don`t say schools aren`t blameless. The right/wrong headmaster/teacher can actually make a huge difference. As someone who is actually "at the coalface" on this, I can tell you that there are more issues than the blinkered opinion of "bad kids and don`t care parents" - lets beat them/fine them.
"Schools/teachers, parents and local authorities all need to work together to help children before it's too late." should not be code for "just do as the school says.
If it`s increasingly prevalent, there are wider factors in society to consider. Perhaps you should also consider those. Oops, sorry, too much thinking required on your part.

[Joe Public @ Large]

@ Jim - Herts
So your a teacher yourself ???, read your rant three times and still haven't a clue what your trying to say, maybe that's ONE/FIRST of the problems. I remember teachers like you at school, basically incomprehensible.

[starling]

I know two disruptive children. One of them is a nastly little cretin who relishes in getting other kids to beat little ones up (he's got two fat cronies). He shoplifts, tries to buy beer in pubs (not managed it yet), causes mayhem in the classroom every day, and is generally a horrible little menace.

The other is autistic. He is very bright, grammar school material, but disruptive in class. He just doesn't -get- the results of his actions. Can't look ahead, can't figure out how people will react. He hasn't got the social skills. You'll find him in the head teacher's office every day.

Both of them have ended up in a school for disruptive kids, where boy number one will enjoy being his cronies, and number two will probably be the one who gets beaten up. Number two will miss out on grammar school, because this school will not be able to teach him anything, apart from new swear words. The only thing it will do is make sure he's no longer disrupting his old class with "normal" kids.

How is this fair? Why aren't there special schools for little criminals like number one and special schools for kids who are bright, but have trouble coping with society? We need schools for autistic kids and kids with aspergers, where there are no distractions and where they can get therapy.

[jnrdoctor]

The issue is that the parents of the other children in the class quite reasonably want the child removed but removing a child from school at age 4 or 5 is currently not in the best interest of society as a whole because the alternative that is offered to mainstream school is often so dire.

Each school should have a halfway house- a classroom with specialist teachers that children are initially excluded to so that their classmates do not suffer. They should eat and spend playtime separtely and be supervised one on one at all time. All behaviour should eb continously corrected including table manners, hygiene etc. The teachers should work on teaching the child acceptable behaviour- it may be (and especially at 4 or 5) that they simply have never been told or shown what acceptable behaviour is. After a few weeks, some may be ready to return to their class, others may need longer and others may have serious problems that require them to transfer to a special school.

Special schools should be specialist- eg some deal only with children who are deaf/blind, some with dyslexia, some with profound physical and mental disabilties, some with autism and some specialise in emotional and behavioural problems (I know some children have more than one type of problem- the system should decide which one is most pressing and allocate the child a suitable place)

But all of that will cost money. But prison, court cases, unemployment, crime, social problems cost more in the long run

In the Times article, it talks about children of 4 or 5 being excluded for sexual misbehaviour. Caning that child is not going to help, despite what all your contributors are calling for. A child of that age exhibiting sexual behaviour has either been abused or been witness to sexual abuse or overt sexual activity (which is of course abuse in itself) Social services should be called in as a matter of urgency.

[Jim - Herts]

@Joe Public @ Large
1 - Hardly a rant compared to the comments by the "a good thrashing is what they need" brigade.
2 - There is no-one as deaf as the person who doesn`t want to hear.
3 - Read it slower.
4 - Not sure about your school - but you need to check your spelling.

[Cathy]

Claire: 'And the really difficult one is this: allowing disruptive children room to roam. It may be an unwelcome surprise to many people that disruptive kids often become very high achievers in later life once their energy and drive has found a focus. Schools are curriculum focussed and have to push for homogenous skills amongst their pupils but a more diverse set of options from an early age would allow many disruptive kids to develop self esteem and focus through achievement instead of always feeling bad about under-achievement.'

I can't disagree, but would like to ask when you last went into a foundation unit/nursery? Children do have room to roam! I've just posted elsewhere (thread about nurture units) about my horrible afternoon yesterday with 80 under-fives all free for most of the time to select their own activities. This is in a deprived inner-city area and some of the parents are, basically, hopeless. Sorry to sound so reactionary but many are ignorant gobby oiks with no manners whatsoever. Again, sorry, but I've had enough of this. Btw I've been doing this job for 26 years and have seen with my own eyes how behaviour has got worse and worse. It's bad parenting by parents who were badly parented themselves and I really don't know how it's going to improve. I suspect it'll continue to get worse.

Anyway, I meant to say early-years staff do understand the needs of all children for free play even though some find it hard to cope with. Please don't be so patronising of them.

[Cathy]

Rosemary: 'The first step here is to make sure they can read fluently. Nothing else is so important. Putting that together, one-on-one reading lessons with a strict disciplinarian that continue until they give in and buckle down. Then you can build on their sense of achievement'

In many cases the children involved are under-fives. Not really much scope there for teaching them to read fluently!

[Laura Roberts]

1. In my time at an ordinary comprehensive secondary school, one child was expelled during 5 years.
2. Detention was virtually unheard of.
3. We respected our teachers.
4. Very little punishment ever had to be dished out as we were all generally well behaved.
5. Parents always turned up at parents evening and it mattered to all.

Today:
1. Children's behaviour is abysmal.
2. For them, there is no respect for parents.
3. Since they don't respect their own parents, teachers have no chance of getting them to respect them, let alone adults in the wider community.
4. Their parents are lazy, ignorant and irresponsible.
5. The act of Parenting is viewed as giving birth + buying things for them. That's it.
6. The balance of power now lies with the child, not the adult who have become second class citizens in our society.
7. The mis-behaving child gets no punishment. The useless parent doesn't either. Both get away with their disgraceful choices, there is no reason for them to improve and make different choices, there is no punishment for them.

All this talk of emotional and financial support is a complete nonsense. The past 20 years of such molly-coddling in our schools has proved beyond any doubt that it doesn't work: it just gets worse.

So stop it all.

Fundamentally the child is the responsibility of the parents. Every single step involved in that child's behaviour must come from the parent. If they will not do it, or are "unable" to do it, they are not fit to be parents and the child should be taken away from them. We do not permit "unfit" people to adopt and bring up children, why do we permit disaster-zone unfit parents to give birth and bring them up?

The focus must always be on the children who are choosing to behave well. They too will have the same stresses and "problems" in their lives, but they make different choices, and should be rewarded and not penalised for their wiser choices.

Any society which focuses so much on those who are making bad choices, ruining lives for the rest of the population, will fail. We have been doing that with increasing frequency over the last 20 years, and we are failing badly. We have to focus on those who are the future and excel, who will create a healthy society; not those whose presence in it is a weight, a problem, a source of destruction.

Children who choose to mis-behave must be punished. If they choose again to fail to follow the rules of the school community into which they have been invited, they must be expelled from it. I would further argue that if they mis-behave at their next school, they should be expelled from the state-provided education system for good.

Enough of this catastrophic education system and awful parenting.

[Cathy]

Jnr Doctor - thanks for your good sense! I taught music many years ago in a primary school which had a unit for children with behavioural difficulties and it seemed to work very well. Those children ate and had playtime with the others - subject to acceptable behaviour - and joined their age group for lessons such as music. I don't remember any real problems, but I did have the class teachers with me (as it's quite hard to teach Infants and maintain discipline from a piano). These children were moved to the unit as early as nursery age if necessary.

[Cathy]

This post has attracted the usual knee-jerk reactions from people with a great deal to say but no practical suggestions whatsoever. For example, even if I did want to hit children as young as four (and the desire did flicker across my mind several times yesterday) I would be breaking the law. Quite right, too. I wouldn't want some teacher hitting one of my children.

I can't help thinking that some of you lot wouldn't last five minutes doing what the professionals do daily. Please have a bit of respect and listen to what we say!

[Cathy]

Laura: 'The focus must always be on the children who are choosing to behave well. They too will have the same stresses and "problems" in their lives, but they make different choices, and should be rewarded and not penalised for their wiser choices.'

I see your point, but few under-fives with awful problems are able to 'choose' to make 'wise choices'. They will do what they've been trained to do by observing parents - their first role models. By the age of three it's extremely difficult for anyone to retrain them. Hard-pressed teachers with 29 other children to deal with (if they're lucky enough to have only one disruptive child) are not the people to do this. It's just not possible, with the best will in the world. But that doesn't mean I don't have every sympathy with these poor children. They need much more radical help than just punishment as the problems are usually profound. The 'good' children just haven't had the same issues to deal with. Sorry, but they haven't! They may be living in poverty but that in itself doesn't cause anti-social behaviour, far from it.

[Kim]

Cathy speaks good sense as usual. Apart from the handful of kids with problems such as ADHD, the majority of badly-behaved children are badly-behaved because of poor parenting. And there aren't any easy solutions, because a school has to try to undo the work of inadequate parenting without any support from parents - many of whom will, as Cathy said, resent any attempt to discipline their child and come to the school and shout at the teacher. What are teachers supposed to do in those circumstances?

And yes, you do need to do one-to-one work with these kids. It may be expensive, but the alternative is that those children grow up to be disturbed, anti-social and criminal. Children don't get to choose their parents, unfortunately.

[Kim]

Jane2: "the general attitude of entitlement engendered by the benefits culture which has burgeoned under Labour. Where there is no self-discipline in the parents (for example, parents who depend on keeping their job in order to eat, will generally observe the niceties towards their employer), there is no self-discipline or respect for others in the children."

Are you seriously saying that there was no benefits culture before the current Labour government?

The trouble with your argument, Jane2, is that you seem to have taken a particular set of social trends that have been underway for very many years and attributed them to to the actions of a single government. Kids behaving badly because there's now a Human Rights Act? Are you saying they wouldn't have behaved badly otherwise?

Quite frankly, one government doesn't have that much power to affect stuff. If only it did.

[Joe Public @ Large]

@ Jim - Herts

I just knew you were a real teacher, run it through an online spellchecker and came up clean, I read it through again like you requested, still comes up gibberish.
I/we could always tell the good teachers at school, pupils listened to what they said because it made sense and they/me learned. Then there were the other ones (you know who I mean), I always thought it was they who were the real cause of disruption, pupils just hadn't a clue what they were on about and soon looked about for other distractions.

Number one priority - get rid of the deadheads in the teaching faculty.

[Colette]

I ran a secondary nurture group back in the 1970s and one of my most disruptive pupils is now a very succesful company director.
I aslo ran a junior nurture group from 1998 to 2005. Quite simply they work - whatever crirteria you care to use - IEP targets, academic progress, attendance, language development, social skills.
The four year olds who were excluded from school for behaving like two year olds. Could it be that if staff had responded to them at their developmental stage, instead of at their chronolgical age, they would still be in school and reaching their full potential? All behaviour is a form of communication - so please, teachers, look beyond the behaviour.

[Jane2]

Kim, I have to go to work now, but will reply in more detail later today.

[Whimsey]

I think one of the problems of giving disruptive children any kind of 'positive attention' is that it effectively penalises the non-disruptive children who do NOT receive such 'positive attention'. The message then becomes clear: Behave badly and teachers rush around tryingto make lessons fun, or putting you in groups where the work is easier, and a whole lot of 'nice fuss' is made about you. Conversely, work hard and diligently and your only reward is more work to do...

I've seen this even in my son's school. The children who are not very academic and a bit, let us say, 'lively' got to do General Studies, which was basically designed to be out-of-classroom activities that drained off energy - and was, therefore, regarded as a whole lot more enjoyable than sitting there donig extra maths or whatever the bright and diligent children got as their 'reward' for being bright and diligent.

The danger is, that unless there is a good tough 'stick' as well as the 'nurturing carrot', we simply end up with a situation that the Daily Mail loves to publicise a la 'School Thugs Sent on £5,000 Sailing Holiday to Straighten Them Out'.....

[Cathy]

Colette: I assume that you have taught in schools as well as running nurture groups? If not, your comments are unfortunate, to say the least. If you have, I (and thousands of other teachers) would love to know how you managed to achieve such levels of professional perfection! Do tell.

[Cathy]

Whimsey: I understand what you're saying but it's a no-win situation. If there's any chance of disruptive children learning how to behave appropriately it has to be taken, for everyone's sake. You'd hate nothing to be done. I often had the parents of 'good' children complain about this very thing. Assuming that their complaint was made in a constructive and not hostile manner - I've taken far more c*** from parents in leafy suburbs than in sink estates, believe me - I would say something along the lines of: 'I understand how you feel and it does make sense, but please try to be grateful that you have such a lovely, popular child who will always make friends easily and have a happy life.' If that didn't get through I'd try: 'If the other child had a disability you probably wouldn't think it unfair for us to compensate. Think of this bad bahaviour as a disability' - which, in very young children it is.

[Anne]

"If we're investing in 1-1 help etc for disruptive kids - I'd rather the extra money went in educating the 95% well behaved ones."

AT LAST - SOMEONE WHO AGREES WITH ME AND SHARES MY VIEWS.

More time and money must be spent on the well-behaved majority. This business of providing 1 to 1 attention to disruptive children is sending out the wrong message. The one thing every child craves for is the praise and individual attention of a respected adult. In my youth, the school system recognised this.

Nowdays, if a child wishes to have 1 to 1 attention from a respected adult, they need to misbehaved.

I could write a long essay about this, but seeing that I have to get back to work, I'll spear you my examples!

[jnrdoctor]

Excellent column in the Times today (can't remember who it was by)

What do you think Baby P would have been like it he had survived and started nursery at 3 and reception at 4?

I am willing to take a punt and say he would have behaved terribly. He would not have learned any decent standards of behaviour from his parents. As a witness to and victim of extreme violence, he could easily have been a violent child. Reading about the violent porn his parents used, it is not that hard to see that he could have shown sexualised behaviour at 4 years old.

Would he not be making "wise choices" by acting in such a way? Should we just say "oh well, ignore him and focus on the children in the class with much less dysfunctional backgrounds. He doesn't deserve any extra help."

Martin Narey of Barnardos was criticised in some papers for saying that we (eg society) would have demonised Baby P as a feral child, a monster, a thug if he had survived. But we would have done. Instead, he died young and blonde and sweet looking so we mourn him.

Punishment, discipline are vital in schools but if we are talking about such disturbed behaviour in infant school aged children then no amount of punishment is going to fix them if they have a home background that is so dysfunctional that they are completely unaware of social norms.

[Kim]

Jnrdoctor - absolutely spot on.

What a lot of people don't seem to understand is that this is a complicated problem. They just think "badly-behaved child - punish it". But it's not that easy. If you have a child that is disruptive because it comes from a highly dysfunctional home, you *have* to somehow find a way of addressing some of those problems.

Anne says: "More time and money must be spent on the well-behaved majority. This business of providing 1 to 1 attention to disruptive children is sending out the wrong message."

Sounds great. But actually a lot of money *is* already spent on the well-behaved majority. The govt has vastly increased education spending in the past 12 years. You might think the money hasn't been spent wisely, but it has certainly been spent. Look at the number of TAs you now get in most schools, for example.

Second, what exactly are you going to do with those disruptive children if not give them one-to-one attention? Suppose you have a 5 year old who won't sit still, shouts and swears at the teacher, thumps the other children, throws chairs in lessons - what is your suggestion for dealing with that?

[Jane]

Ahem, Kim. What do you think all the TAs are for? They are giving one to one attention for the disruptive kids.

The explosion in numbers of TAs is just a indicator of how many children are coming into school with problems, (Don't give me "Special Needs", those who truly have special needs are not that numerous).

We have medicalised bad behaviour and made it everybodys problem.

If we want schools to deal with the problem then we should give headteachers the power to discipline and control without fear of legal action or attack, (within reason of course). If we don't, may I suggest that we don't allow these people to breed? Radical I know!

[Whimsey]

"Think of this bad bahaviour as a disability' - which, in very young children it is"

With respect to the child, yes, agree (at a very young age that is, when they are only open to parental influence, not societal).

But with respect to their parents NO NO NO NO NO NO

ie, whilst I would, very naturally, feel very compassionate towards parents coping with a child's physical/cerebral disability, I feel nothing but RAGE about parents who actually CREATE the bad behaviour problem in their offspring!!!!

And, again, carrot has to be tempered with a large stick applied too - we cannot and should not 'bribe' children to behave well, it is their social duty to do so, and they need to be in receipt of 'stick' if they fail to honour that duty (but expect others to behave well to them of course!)

As I said in respect of the whole bad behaviour issue on the (very similar!) post on nurture groups, in the end the only 'real solution' is to drain the swamps - the dysfunctional families which breed badly behaved children (who, then, of course, go on to be dysfunctional and badly behaved adults and parents themselves - unto the nth generation!)

[Jane2]

Kim, I've come back. Yes, I agree that my post was rather simplistic. When one posts a comment on a site like this, one is trying to compact a lot of thoughts into a reasonably small post, and so it can come across as a bit of a rant.

There is a lot of data to be collected and analysed on the subject of exclusions, several dozen PhD theses, I am sure, and wider issues to take into consideration, such as social trends over the last 15-20 years.

However, as I indicated in my original post, I was speaking, not academically, not anecdotally, but from what I actually saw in practice, limited in scope though this was.

Discipline problems increased dramatically during the course of the last 12 years.

At the school where I started governing, 20 years ago, discipline as an issue never came up at all. The issues were all about stretching the budget to the last £1, and managing the constant changes implied by the introduction of the National Curriculum. (The Head left because of the NC).

At the secondary school (less than half a mile from the primary, so not in a different catchment area) discipline was obviously on the agenda, as older children have issues.

But suddenly, and I do mean suddenly, it all got almost out of hand. Each governor was allocated to a curriculum area, so as to keep in touch with the grass roots, as well as sitting on committees. My area was PE. The PE staff were in despair.

Comments like: "We can't teach athletics if children run about all over the place as soon as they're let out of the classroom."
"We can't teach field events if they won't observe basic rules like not moving when someone is throwing a javelin." A new intake had arrived which didn't seem properly socialized, and didn't observe basic rules of the classsroom. Other curriculum departments sent similar messages to governors' meetings.

The school is a good, well-led one, and got on top of it, but it took a HUGE effort. A new Deputy Head had to be appointed with special responsibility for discipline, a new code had to be written, and constantly revisited.

I did air my view that this was linked to the age the children started school, and the fact that they' grown up under New Labour, but no-one uttered a word, either to agree or otherwise. They were all far too polite. As far as I know, no-one within the school has attempted to trace a cause. They are too busy keeping on top of things.

However conflated my figuring, (and I agree it is conflated), I think the issue needs addressing.

New Labour did a lot of good things for education, throwing money into projects like new buildings, Specialist Schools, Beacon Schools, Leading Edge Schools, City Academies, Clusters of Excellence, Gifted and Talented schemes.

But they also intoduced an atmosphere of entitlement encapsulated by the Human Right Act. Pupils and their parents quote their rights when asked to do something they don't like. The original article in The Times noted that schools that dealt well with the issue were on top of minor discipline issues, and it takes a whole lot more effort to do that when your range of sanctions is limited.

New Labour also introduced 24 hour drinking and feted at Downing Street and with knighthoods such media stars as Sir Mick Jagger (who has a criminal record). This sends a message about the values it thinks important.

Lastly, New Labour changed the concept of welfare from that of a basic safety net of last resort, to a trap, where people in a certain marginal range of income find it more cost-effective not to work than to work. This affects particularly young families, as so much welfare is aimed at helping children. The trouble is that children don't live on their own, they live with adults.

Once people become trapped in a lifestyle of staying at home on benefits, although perfectly able-bodied, they lose the concept of cause and effect. It doesn't matter if they use foul language from morning till night, (a sacking offence at workplaces). It doesn't matter if they don't set an alarm clock and get the children up for school. It doesn't matter if they don't toilet train their child. (A Primary Head of my acquaintance reports children entering Reception still in nappies). It doesn't matter if they never finish anything, or aim for anything (both useful concepts for helping children achieve with regard to homework and coursework). All these attitudes are, of course, absorbed by the helpless little ones who live with them.

These issues need to be faced up to. Yes, nurture and treat the effects as they present themselves in schools, but look at causes as well.

[Kim]

@Jane - you said the TAs are mainly dealing with the disruptive kids. Not in my daughter's school, or other schools I know of, where they spend much of their time helping out with kids who are slow learners. There may well be an overlap with children who are disruptive, in that children who don't understand what is going on may be more badly-behaved. However, helping them understand is probably a good thing, wouldn't you say?

As you say, you could, of course, ban people from breeding. Can you name a political party prepared to implement such a policy?

@Jane2: well, that is a more considered post, but to be honest, I don't buy it. I think the culture of entitlement has been around a long time - long before 1997 - and while some people now like to cite the Human Rights Act, that's just a convenient peg on which to hang their over-developed sense of their own rights.

Similarly, I think the welfare culture has been around a long time. You say "New Labour changed the concept of welfare from that of a basic safety net of last resort, to a trap, where people in a certain marginal range of income find it more cost-effective not to work than to work" but you don't provide any evidence for this - in fact, my memory of the past few years is that Labour has been trying, albeit patchily, to make it harder to get benefits.

The main thing Labour has done wrong, I feel, is to penalise schools that exclude pupils, which means that disruptive children are allowed to stay in school even if their behaviour is well outside the bounds of what is acceptable. That, I think, has had a very negative impact. (There was a very shocking story earlier this week about a teacher being raped by a 15 year old boy who had already sexually assaulted a cleaner. What exactly do you have to do to get excluded these days?)

For the most part, though, I still believe that the social trends that have led to current levels of bad behaviour were already underway when Labour came to power. I genuinely doubt whether it would have been any different under the Conservatives. We may have to agree to differ!

[Cathy]

Whimsey: 'ie, whilst I would, very naturally, feel very compassionate towards parents coping with a child's physical/cerebral disability, I feel nothing but RAGE about parents who actually CREATE the bad behaviour problem in their offspring!!!!'

I wasn't talking about the parents. I said that children who can't behave properly, for whatever reason, if under the age of about seven, deserve compassion, not mindless punishment.

[Cathy]

Jane: 'Ahem, Kim. What do you think all the TAs are for? They are giving one to one attention for the disruptive kids.

The explosion in numbers of TAs is just a indicator of how many children are coming into school with problems, (Don't give me "Special Needs", those who truly have special needs are not that numerous'

That's just not true. I work in approximately a dozen Infant schools and the TAs are there for special needs, which includes behavioural problems but is not limited to that. Google the 1983 Education Act if you don't believe me.

[Cathy]

Jnr Doctor - yet again, thanks! I quite agree about Baby P. We have in this country a culture of sentimentalising children until they do something that children aren't supposed to do - then we turn the big guns on them. As we do with women (see Myra Hindley and James Bulger's killers). I have worked with several seriously abused and brutalised young children and, surprise, surprise, they do not resemble little angels. They are horrible, unlikeable little people but it's not my job, as a teacher, to judge. Unlike some self-appointed 'experts'!

I wrote yesterday about a four-year-old who had hit his teacher; perhaps I should point out that he regularly sees Dad beat Mum to a pulp. He's a very anxious, unhappy and fairly unattractive child who will no doubt grow into a bully in due course. Even so, my heart bleeds for him (as long as he doesn't hit me!).

[Cathy]

Correction: My reply to Jane should have referred to the 1981 Education Act. I can only say it was a looooooong time ago!

[Bart]

Aren't they the products of our generous benefit and immigration system?

[Whimsey]

"I wrote yesterday about a four-year-old who had hit his teacher; perhaps I should point out that he regularly sees Dad beat Mum to a pulp. He's a very anxious, unhappy and fairly unattractive child who will no doubt grow into a bully in due course. Even so, my heart bleeds for him (as long as he doesn't hit me!)."

Cathy, that's exactly what I mean by 'we have to drain the swamp'. Poor kid. And poor HIS kids in turn - all doomed, unless, yes, we intervene early enough. BUT, how much intervention will it take to avert that child's doom? And will it take removing them from his abusive parents? And how many more of them are there like that? And how do we stop abusive parents having children themselves in the first place? (etc etc)

You mention the Bulger killers, and this poor child's violent father, plus this poor (but currently unpleasant) child - and this again raises a HUGE and perhaps unanswerable (?) question - at what point do human beings take responsbility for their actions? At what point are they actually 'culpable' for what they do?

At what point does 'I didn't know any better' become 'I was only following orders' in our societal Moral Maze??

I honestly don't know the answer!

[Whimsey]

"Aren't they the products of our generous benefit and immigration system"

I'd say 'partially', but not necesarily in a simplistic way.

For example, it's 'received view' that immigrants are usually far more appreciative of the opportunities for personal betterment that the host culture offers (which is why they came in the first place!), and therefore are very hardworking and diligent. Sometimes, ironically, too much so - and there are currently concerns that Asian children are being 'overworked' study-wise by (understandably up to a point) ambitious parents.

But perhaps the attribution of 'cause' can also be directed towards cultural dislocation, or 'endogenous cultural norms' simply not adapting well to western society. For example, in the Caribbean, the traditional absence of fathers may not be a problem for young male teens, as there is enough stability in society as a whole to 'keep them on the straight and narrow' - but relocate that 'absent father culture' to the streets of Brixton, and there is NO 'societal stability' to peform the paternal office, and so the young male teens go wild, and form their own societal structures (ie, gangs).

As for the benefits culture, again, I don't think it is necesarily a straightforward cause and effect relationship. Whilst it is undoubtedly true that our benefits culture allows people to sponge off the state (I'm excluding, obviously, those in genuine need, ie, the genuinely disabled)(not the 'too fat to work' lot beloved by the Daily Mail!), thus engendering a culture of 'entitlement' amongst their children (and themselves, of course!), it can also be that those in receipt of benefits are genuinely disadvantaged, whether through physical or mental incapacity (which is why they can't hold down a job), and so it is inevitable, perhaps, that their children should perform worse at school.

Surely the ultimate 'unfair' castigation of a 'benefits child' are those children who have to be carers at home, their childhoods stolen from them, who may very undertandably therefore not be shining pupils at school, and display a lot of problem behaviour because of the burdens imposed on them at home (often by parents who love them desperately, but whom the state shamefully fails to help in an effective, family-centre fashion)(I'm still haunted by the story in the ST coverage of Young Carers a while ago, of the young boy who looked after his single parent mother with breast cancer, finally cracked under the strain, told a teacher, and the result was that the SW took him into care and dumped the mum in a hospice and he never saw her again...it HAUNTS me....)

[anon.]

My first year of teaching, my first class, and I've been bitten, spat at and fly kicked by an under five. Do you really expect the other children in the class to be able to do great learning. I believe we owe it to the rest of society to give these children specialist help, but please get them out of the classroom, so the others can learn!!

[Kim]

This problem was discussed on Woman's Hour yesterday. They had a very sensible secondary school head saying that two things helped enormously in his school. One was disciplining unruly children by putting them in a room on their own all day where they were still expected to learn and do work but where they weren't able to see any of their friends (they had different break times too). These days were usually followed by detentions. It worked much better, he said, than temporary exclusions, which pupils regarded as a reward.

The other thing that helped was having a police officer allocated to the school through the Safer Schools Initiative, so that if any child's behaviour really overstepped the mark, they went straight to the police offer (with the implied threat of being arrested). As a result, children's behaviour *didn't* overstep the mark.

They both seemed like good measures to me. I think the idea of bringing a police offer into primary school would be a bit drastic, but the other measure could work.

[ShyAsrai]

perhaps the entire first year of schooling should be dedicated to training children to be students.

with that type of training, any delay in beginning academic lessons would surely be overcome by virtue of teachers actually being able to use their time to TEACH, rather than POLICE.

[Cathy]

ShyAsrai: 'perhaps the entire first year of schooling should be dedicated to training children to be students.

with that type of training, any delay in beginning academic lessons would surely be overcome by virtue of teachers actually being able to use their time to TEACH, rather than POLICE.'

That is actually more or less what already happens in Reception classes. 'Academic lessons' as many laypersons may envisage them don't happen. The most formal teaching experienced in Reception will be short, lively, interactive sessions. Many children can't even cope with sitting still for two minutes (I'm not exaggerating) and of course none of this is helped by constant nagging from parents who don't want their genius child to waste his/her precious time at school 'just playing'. You can't win.

Whoops!

[Alex]

Until there are consequences for both the parents and the children, there is no hope.
Forget one on one for these feral kids, get some consequences involved. No amount of TA's will solve the problem, they wont have a TA through life.
Bring back the birch and National Service.
It works on Bad Lads Army.

[richard]

I work as a community mental health nurse. At the moment i have two clients are physically able to work but have nearly 20,000 pounds in savings each. These people do very little therefore are given so much money via benefits they don't know what to do with it. In the past i have had other clients with incomes/savings at this level. When a person is receiving over 800 pounds monthly (including full housing benefit) where is the incentive to recover and get back into society.

[Alex]

Any system which pays benefits to those with that much in savings is flawed, the welfare system is meant for those "in need" as a safety net. Mental or physical illnes shouldnt automatically qualify you for a payment, if you have money or are capable of working you should, if you dont you have no income, simple. They need to toughen up the application of the rules.

[Tony Collins]

Blaming the parents is a waste of time. It's too late for them and no business of teachers now. Some of them were probably disruptive pupils too, now beyond redemption.
The problem is with the children. They are the ones being processed by the educational system. They are the ones who must accept the special rules which schools impose on them.
Discipline should be exerted by a gentle balance of rewards and punishment. Rewards like good conduct marks associated with small privileges.
Punishments, by their very nature must be uncomfortable to the pupil, and graded in severity until the individual's tolerance level is reached or exceeded. Starting with stern looks, sarcasm, segregation from friends, petty chores, detention and ultimately - the cane. No pupil asks to be subjected to a caning in front of peers!
The carrot/stick method has worked successfully for millions of years, and still works for animals, (sometimes with death as the ultimate punishment) and I cannot believe that humans have miraculously taken an evolutionary leap in just the last two generations.
And if the law doesn't allow, then lobby to change the law.
To those dismissive of the 'hang'em, flog'em' brigade I say this - You are the problem.

[governor]

"New Labour did a lot of good things for education, throwing money into projects like new buildings, Specialist Schools, Beacon Schools, Leading Edge Schools, City Academies, Clusters of Excellence, Gifted and Talented schemes"

not in the secondary state school at which I am a governor ... after adjustment for student numbers, we got £50k less last year than in the year before - despite increases in teachers' pay and electricity. We are now at the top of the county list for improvements to school buildings - but there is noww no capital funding for the foreseeable ... We are proud of our specialist school accreditations, but would not be able to balance the books at all without the small extra funding that gives. We do not get enough cash to cover our special needs children. We would like some funding to improve our sports facilities - but this is syphoned off and given to the Sports Academies - who can no longer think of things to spend the money on, they are so well equipped.

So where does the cash go? Cynically I would say to all the layers of admin at County level (who rotate their jobs every 12 months or so, so you are always dealing with someone new who doesn't know what their predecssor was doing) and, or course, Labour's beloved Academies - who get far more money per child than we do ...

[Cece]

I see all the corporal punishment fetishists have come out of their (PVC lined) closets for this one. What a surprise.

[M]

Every school should have access to a counsellor so that children can tell them their problems. They should have a school nurse. Proper food - I don't think there should be that much choice and no unhealthy options. And all schools should have SENCOs and all teachers should have some special needs training. I do think special needs can cause children to misbehave. My son is high functioning autistic and he also has ADHD. He is mostly okay and is in a mainstream pre-prep school, but his behaviour at home can be difficult and challenging. I dread to think what he would be like in a state school with big class sizes, no support because you have to be 4 years below your chronological age to get statemented and 1:1 support. Not enough money is getting to the schools. Too much is wasted on silly initiatives and non jobs in education.

And to those who think you should just concentrate on the teachable ones, well those unteachable kids could become the criminals of the future (not always) and it is important for us all to turn them around and get them back on track. Maybe the answer is small schools for troublesome kids where it's run like a boot camp and discipline is instilled into them. Not cruel, but a loving reinforcing sort of discipline. Some troublesome kids get sent to boarding schools and it does wonders for them.

[José]

I don't really think the people reading this and participating on the School Gate are the root of the problem. You for instance are well informed and do care about problems related to your children.

The problem is getting this information and concern to other families which don't care that much or aren't warned of the problem they've been ignoring.

Those families which can lose the control of their children. Those children which will break the rules while your kids watch it and perhaps feel tempted to try a new way of behaving.

This problem is a good issue to fight and move foward for a better society, although the root may not be the more accurate.

[YR]

Parents these days are generally trying harder but getting nowhere. I used to behave because I valued my parents and worried about losing them.. now parents are s often absent or pic n mix ..buy one get one free..people come and go in kids life like sheep in a pen. Attachments not strong enough anymore in the throwaway society.

[Michael]

I was assaulted by a teacher 30 years ago. He closed his door and hit me repeatedly on the back of my head. He was a thug and that is not the kind of person we want in schools. He ought to have done time.

[YR]

The child who threw the chair at the teacher probably did the same to his mum or dad first.
M says it all 'Some troublesome kids get sent to boarding schools and it does wonders for them.'
The only boy I knew ever became famous went to a borstal in the 60's.. he was a lead guitarist in a well known pop group. They stopped borstals partly because parents of normal kids were complaining the borstal kids got too many extra treats!

[KSB]

There will always be an element in society that shouldn't be allowed to raise children. Unfortunately, human rights prevent any impossed birth control. As such, it's a sad fact that some children will be troublesome and will continue their bad behaviour into adulthood. But children aren't stupid. They know there is very little deterent or punishment for their actions. But as long as the world is controlled by PC soft touch lefties, the problem will remain.

[James]

During my time at school our punishments changed from the slipper to "minus points". At the end of the week they totted up your score and if you were in the red you got a talking to from a senior pupil. No other consequences and on Monday your slate was wiped clean. We realised very early on that it was a farce and discipline went into freefall.

[Richard]

I've had parents come into my surgery with their 5 year old who comes in and sits quietly on the seat.

They think their child has ADHD - as when they scream at her she screams back...

I really wanted to say that their child was perfectly normal, but they were apparently dreadful parents.

[Chris]

Solve the problem of disruptive children in a generation: sterilize them all at 15.

[Jane]

I have two school age children, and I teach cookery classes for children too. I have seen loads of hideously behaved children, but in most cases, I have to say, that the parents are completely to blame. Somewhere along the line we have to accept that if parents outsource their children ALL the time, slam them into nurseries, daycare, classes - then the children ARE going to be difficult and demand attention, because they don't get any at home. I don't mean the children who suffer from ADHD, I know a few of these and they are truly in need of help - but the children whose behaviour is just plain rude, demanding, attention-seeking, selfish, aggressive - these children are not able to work as part of a team, are not able to share, are overly competitive - these children are the ones who have been outsourced almost from Day 1. Parents are to blame 9 times out of 10 - because they don't set a good standard or instill good values. Sorry, it's not a politically correct opinion, but I work with children and parents, and I see it ALL the time.

[Ashton]

I have become friendly with a teacher from Belgium who is just completing a year teaching in a U.K. secondary school. He reports that he witnesses more teacher/student confrontations in a day at his U.K. school than he does in a year at his urban school in Belgium. The reason for this, he concludes, is that U.K. schools are the only ones in Europe that enforce humiliating and degrading rules on kids on issues like appearance, clothes, music, etc. In Belgium, those are not educational issues, kids dress as they please, look as they please - no confrontations. He feels there is an obsession in the U.K. of attempting to make school life as unpleasant as possible for kids - modern day kids won't accept this, hence the state of war in our schools.

[YR]

Ashton I dont agree..uniform is supposed to give the kids a sense of connection and belonging to a particular school. I was extermely proud of my uniform. It was a struggle for my parents as normally my clothes we handed down and I was first into secondary school but I hung it with pride and looked at it with excitement every day until September. It was a rite of passage in a way and made me start thinking about school as being serious rather than just fun.

[Jos]

YR,

If uniform is such a brilliant predictor of good behaviour in schools, why is it that countries in Europe where they don't have it also don't seem to have the same level of behaviour problems as the UK (and do better in terms of educational outcomes too?)
However, I don't agree with Ashton that uniform causes bad behaviour. Look across the pond and you will see teachers who are not shackled by government targets and a complete straitjacket curriculum. You'll see teachers who are allowed to enforce discipline - though not through corporal punishment, that was abolished early last century in most other European countries. Instead they are allowed to remove disruptive pupils from lessons and send them to the head or deputy head, who also has the power to deal with them. You don't need physical violence when you can deprive unruly children of attention, the company of their peers, and fun other people are having while they are slaving away in detention/a separate classroom if primary.

[Andy]

At what point do you stop making excuses for the child and saying, "She was abused as a child and that is why, the way she is" or "He was beaten every day and so that is why he is a bully" or "She saw her mother drink and that is why she is a drunk" and start saying "He is an animal of the worst possible kind and should be locked up and they key throwing away for what he did to that baby"

[John D.]

What happened to busting their little butts??---Oh--that child abuse. What happened to drawing a ring on the chalk board and having the little bugger stand with his/her nose in it??---Oh --- that's child abuse. What happened to the parents taking charge of their kids??---Oh--- that's child abuse too. Hmmm do ya get the drift here??

[Cathy]

Andy: I don't see that acknowledging the likely causes of behaviour necessarily implies refusing to punish - do you?

I got very hot and grumpy at work yesterday and (probably) snarled a bit. If I'd gone further and smacked a pupil I'd quite rightly have been severely disciplined. The cause would have been the same, though. Phew, what a scorcher.

[Val]

What's all this great understanding of children? Almost every mammal on earth teaches their young discipline and social interaction and does it by instinct. What has happened to children being told to sit down and listen and learn? Children are just that... CHILDREN! They are NOT the centre of the universe, they do NOT know everything about the world, how to interact with others, or how to manage and survive the ups and downs and disappointments adulthood brings... they need to be TAUGHT!
So, they don't like it sometimes... tough!
Learning self discipline is part of developing a way to survive and go easy over the humps in life.
It's past time to throw out the head doctors and do-gooders and use a bit of commonsense.

[Cathy]

Val: I look forward to sitting at your feet while you show me how it's done. Clearly we teachers have been missing something very obvious.

[Val]

Cathy... you get the results of this fashion for kids to be brought up as.. special, little darlings who can do what they like. Must be understood etc.
If this is to change it must start in the home at a young age.
I wouldn't do your job for anything. We must get the fashion changed... for the kids' sake, then you at school can do what you are paid to do... be teachers, not social workers.

[Cathy]

Val: Can't argue with any of that. Sorry. Grumpy. Hot weather. Harrumph.

[Val]

Don't worry, Cath... the heat is getting me grumpy too. We are just not used to this hot, heavy weather.
It gets an old bat like me sounding off. But the thing is I adore kids and have spent my 66 years surrounded with sons, grandkids and now great grandkids and it's so very sad to see the borders in family life disappear. So many kids running wild and missing the best part of being CHILDREN.

[oneopinionatedmother]

i really don't think bad behaviour is anythng new, in fact my own mum was beaten to a bloody pulp in her grammar school (the teacher pulled her up 'causing trouble again, eh?')

todays kids are more likely to abuse the fridge than their co-educatees.
what to do about it?
teach, teach well, get heads to back teachers up so they can teach.

although expulsion used to work, many schools have found alternative solutions. more power to them.

@whimsey...some naughty kids come from wealthy backgrounds. its just they get sent to private schools where they aren't expelled so long as the cheques keep cashing.

[Kim]

@Val - you're right, it must start in the home. The trouble is that homes are much harder to change than schools, because the government has no control over what happens in the home.

So in my daughter's school (which is really the only one I am very familiar with), children for the most part do sit quietly and do what they're told. But if there is a widespread problem of children being disruptive in the classroom, then all we can really do is help schools find ways of dealing with that. The government can't go into each and every home and tell parents how they should be bringing up their children. While most of us can agree on the problem, the solution is much trickier to arrive at.

[Val]

KIM... that is bang on, homes are the hardest places to change and it cannot be done quickly. The general mood of the country has to change first.
It's kind of hard being older because you know things have changed but can't put your finger on a specific. I only know that as a child from a poor inner city environment I grew up with respect for pareants, school and police etc. it was taught to all of us by our family. So, maybe family should now be made responsible for the behaviour of their children? But that cannot be done while the 'do-gooders' keep coming up with things like.... 'you shouldn't shout or raise your voice at or near children it may damage their emotions'... sadly I think that is tosh because my mum would raise her voice and next doors dog would sit down.... along with any child in the immediate locality. It was called discipline!

[Whimsey]

@whimsey...some naughty kids come from wealthy backgrounds. its just they get sent to private schools where they aren't expelled so long as the cheques keep cashing.

***

Indeed! I can remember last year or thereabouts a news story about a public school that threw out a real 'bad lad' and then the boy's father tried to sue to school.

Private schools can be very lax about getting rid of bullies and disruptive children as they want the fees.Maybe it would take all the other parents threatening to withdraw their children if the troublemaker is not expelled, to get the school to do so.

[Cathy]

Val (and others): I've always believed that children should be a little scared of the adults in charge. Scared of their anger, at least. Once a child has witnessed me in full shouty mode they don't want to see it again. I learnt that from a very mild-mannered mum/teacher who smacked me just the once and thereafter only had to give me 'the look'. I was a very sensitive child, admittedly.

[Whimsey]

Cathy - I completely disagree! No human being should ever be scared of any other!

Instead, we should all - adult or child - respect each other, and treat each other accordingly. Disruptive children are failing to respect their fellow pupils, their teachers and, of course, themselves.

The consequences for disrespecting is that you lose your right to respect by others - ie, you take the consequences (unpleasant ones!) of your actions.

[Whimsey]

Should have added - of course, where schools lack the power to impose unpleasant consquences, then I can see why a teacher would have to resort to 'fear'. But that fear would very swiftly evaprate once the child realises that nothing actually happens that is nasty, other than being verbally chastised. I would agree that that is sufficient for some children, but hardly for the hard-core troublemakers!

[Cathy]

Whimsey: I did say a little scared. Scared of what might happen if one goes too far. If children aren't scared of anything, where are we then? You talk of unpleasant consequences - what are these, exactly? I'd much rather my pupils were scared of my anger than of other, nastier consequences. And the obverse of course is that when they're good we all have a lovely time!

[Cathy]

Whimsey: Please see my reply to your last! I agree that hard-core cases need more than hard looks but I assure you all but the most challenging children respect an adult who is capable of making them feel uncomfortable and saves this power for special occasions.

Here's how it works (and I do make my living teaching very young children to whom I am a stranger so I venture to suggest I know what I'm talking about). The traditional advice when beginning to teach a new class is 'Don't smile till Christmas' which would make my lot a miserable one. But I do go into a new school or classroom with my very cool don't-mess-with-me face on. No treats, just business-like. Rows of solemn little faces. I've acquired the art of acting: disbelief, outrage, shock, horror, deep, deep disappointment, you name it. Not quite Oscar-winning standard, but they're not the most discriminating audience. By day two I'm usually able to let them see the 'nice' Mrs B who smiles and laughs a lot. But anyone who has trespassed on day one will have let the whole class see that I'm not to be messed with. This is a tremendous way to earn a living and the show-off in me just loves it. But as I say, it's a healthy fear of what MIGHT happen, all supported by the school's behaviour policy, obviously. It works for the majority.

[oneopinionatedmother]

@ Cathy - completely agree!
a bit of theatrical scare to keep them in line works a treat with dogs, so why not kids...

from what i remember, the worst thing from our perspective was not the teacher that glared at us, it was the one that burst into tears. *how* guilty did we feel..

[Val]

You know, sitting here and listening from an older age I hear so much sense I wonder why the PC brigade ever have to meddle in our education. Teachers (and most mothers) have an inate ability to handle children that comes from instinct (which was where I started my first post) Left alone and free from the 'we know it all because we are 'experts' even if many of us never actually had kids' brigade we would forget targets and such rubbish and actually educate our youngsters.
Oh... how I dislike this world of experts.

[Kim]

This discipline question is so interesting. I have to say, I wish I didn't have to resort to shouting. The best teachers I have known are ones who have a natural authority, and somehow instill respect without raising their voice. Daughter's current head is like that, as was (interestingly) the lovely woman who ran her pre-school. Natural authority seems to be an innate quality, however, not a learned one!

I think when "experts" say you shouldn't shout at children, it's not because they believe there should be no discipline, but that there are more effective ways of disciplining children. I'm sure there are, but I've just never been very good at them.