Worrying Signs and Concerning Noises
I was surprised to read the linked article-seven out of ten teachers want to quit their jobs because of badly behaved pupils http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/seven-out-of-10-teachers-want-to-quit-survey-shows-2096257.html and every bit as concerning for me is the implicit assertion that some sort of deregulation will help. Deregulate what exactly?
Statute tells us that we may use “reasonable force”, what seems to be absent from the debate is reference to criminal (case) law that gives the profession some working definition related to what “reasonable” might look like. The teaching profession, as things stand, is right to err on the side of caution-headline cases often resulting in the end of a teaching career. There’s a wider agenda running here and it’s to do with the coalition’s assertion that there is something fundamentally wrong with our state system that can be improved by throwing further confusion at an already demoralised profession-the Charter School.“ Here’s something from Michael Gove:
“He has insisted - along with other Democrat reformers like Arne Duncan, Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee – that there be more great Charter schools – the equivalent of our Academies– to drive up attainment, especially among the poorest. In New York, Charter schools – like the inspirational Knowledge is Power Programme schools - have dramatically narrowed the vast performance gap between black and white children and 91% of those benefitting are on free or reduced price meals.
With a relentless focus on traditional subjects, a culture of no excuses, tough discipline, personalised pastoral care and enthusiastic staff who work free from Government bureaucracy to help every child succeed, these schools are amazing engines of social mobility that are now sending children from ghetto areas to elite universities.” http://www.michaelgove.com/content/national_college_annual_conference
Michael Gove’s commitment to the potential of Charter Schools may well have been increased by his support of and work with Frances Lawrence, widow of the London Head Teacher, Philip Lawrence-murdered in a gang-related incident outside of his school and I personally applaud the support he has given to a process that has rewarded good citizenship and supported legislation to ban knives.
How do we as communities address the problems that exist on our streets and in our houses and family lives that contribute to the uncertainties that contribute to 70% of surveyed teachers and, at their most extreme, are in part responsible for the murder of a good man, inspirational leader and gifted headteacher?
Margaret Thatcher’s assertion that “There is no such thing as society” was part of statement that suggested that there are “individual men and women and there are families” and that the use of the term “society” had become a byword with which to explain a dependency culture: it was the government’s job to sort out problems. The same government that did almost nothing other than at its best preside over and at its worse seek to influence the factors that led to the collapse of the heavy industries that were part of the foundations that underpinned society.
So now, “society” is failing to get a fair deal from schools that are bound by bureaucracy-this from the party of government whose reforms of the late eighties and early nineties saw a disproportionate increase in form filling in the name of accountability that has seldom been replicated and the part answer if to consider a system-Charter Schools-that is succeeds in a different culture where the gap between rich and poor experienced would be unacceptable in every aspect to British Society.
In a letter to the New York Times, J.D. Merriman, Chief Executive of the Charter School Center (sic) refers to the stringent reviews of groups who wish to start Charter Schools, that they (the schools) should be held in account for achieving the outcomes promised and that this has to be underpinned (Charter Schools or otherwise) by one of New York’s great assets, a well motivated and cohort of Principles and Teachers who place achievement at the top of their agenda.
So, how does this square with the current position: where will the well motivated cohort of leaders and teachers emerge, to whom will they be accountable, how will achievement be recognised and how will high standards of behaviour be maintained?
Almost twenty years ago I accepted the Headship of a Pupil Referral Unit in Birmingham: our population was made up of three categories. Fixed Term Excluded, Permanently Excluded and Indefinitely Excluded. Indefinite Exclusions made up the larger proportion of the Centre’s population and existed largely “off the radar” of their Mainstream school-gone quietly, no fuss and the money remained with the schools.
Schools had two routes open to them. Exclude or Statement of Special Education Needs-in 1997-1998 around 12,300 (.16 of the total school population) Children and Young People were excluded from school, by 2008-2009 there had been a massive adjustment to 6550 (.09 of the total school population). During the same period, the number of Statemented Children in mainstream schools has risen.
In the late nineties and early part of this decade I headed up Behaviour Support services in two West Midlands Authorities and part of the job was to provide access to support personnel who could work within schools, with learners, their parent and teachers and, at the same time, make it more challenging for schools to exclude. This against the background noise of increased accountability and bureaucracy and increased pressure on the centralised capacity to offer the provision needed to make a major impact, the prevailing mantra to schools on a national scale seeming to be “You must cope”.
Money taken from the Centre made its way into schools budgets: it is my belief that the competing demands of providing support and discipline and of being simultaneously pro-active and reactive has significantly diluted the impact of work schools can offer to learners who challenge, fractured families who are unable to assist us and the increased realisation that there are hard, hard times to come.
The “improvement” (reduction) in permanently excluded pupils hides in my view, a substantial contributory factor to teacher stress and demoralisation and here it is. The behaviour that once resulted in exclusion has not significantly changed. It is contained differently. Increased budgetary pressure on other front line services has reduced the capacity to respond as well as we might-the pressure on Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, Social Care and other Local Authority Support Services has increased the tensions and frustrations that surround challenging children in difficult circumstances.
The answer is not to further dismantle the capacity to deliver cohesive and coordinated responses. Neither is to be found in suggesting to interest groups that all that is needed is to set up a Charter School and within “One Leap Jack Was Free” of the constraints of State provision all will be well-this does a disservice to all concerned.
Making it “easier” for teachers to use physical intervention places us all in a difficult place-what is reasonable? When is it unreasonable? Who should be trained? And at the very time we seem to be the potential architects of a concerning tension that will encompass Safeguarding issues, I note the resignation of Jim Gamble from CEOP following the Home Secretary’s decision to incorporate it into the National Crime Agency.
The Vetting & Barring Scheme and I.S.A may well be regarded as too bureaucratic to survive in their current format at a time when careful thought should be given to who we recruit and how, should we go along the route of Charter Schools.
There’s unlikely to be a simple answer-experienced professionals require affirmation of their status, let them contribute to the debate on behavioural standards, levels and types of intervention needed and the capacity building required to increase job satisfaction and reduce the impacts created by children and young people whose challenging behaviour make their continued presence in Mainstream Education a problematic blight on outcomes, achievement and happiness for the wider school community.
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