erm....I teach in a very good school and in the last 12 months, there has been a noticeable decline in overall behaviour. Our younger students - years 7 and 8 - are particularly unsettled. I don't think this is surprising, in the circumstances, but it is worrying and it is something that needs managing to within an inch of its life before previously good schools become difficult and the more challenging school environments become impossible to teach in. There is already a crisis in teaching without this and there is already too many children who are struggling to reach their potential because of the situation in some of our classrooms.
As someone who also lives in a very deprived area (think top 10/bottom 10 of any kind of negative list an area could be on), there is also a clear increase in problems with young people on the streets and antisocial behaviour generally - we have had numerous incidences of police being pelted with stones, for example, when groups of young people are challenged about being out and together in lockdown. There is also most definitely an increase in the very deliberate but often petty crime, kids walking the streets at 2am trying car doors, for example, and taking any cash or anything that might be saleable out of vehicles.
If teachers can't use detentions and exclusions to deal with how they are being spoken to, threatened and abused verbally (and I am hearing tales of increases in physical attacks - anecdotal, but nonetheless it's happening), then what? If some of these children consider attacking the police is an option, then you imagine what it is like to have these same children in front of you in school. To take from the article, there really is a need, in many schools, 'to sweat the small stuff'. That doesn't mean we don't understand, or care, that children have struggled with lockdown, have lost loved ones, have parents who have lost their jobs, have seen their parents mental health decline, are living in poverty, reliant on foodbanks etc. That doesn't mean we aren't making referrals, buying breakfast, buying school uniform or shoes for families where there is now no income etc. Schools have always done that and will continue to do so.
But the key function of a school is to educate - to drag children kicking and screaming through Government mandated exams so that they are able to move onto the next stage of their lives with as many qualifications behind them as possible. Gone are the glory days of education for education's sake. It's all about league tables and sats and progress 8 and ofsted gradings...and that hasn't gone away. If you want schools to be at the forefront of supporting children as the pandemic rumbles on then you need to be demanding funding to put more in-class support in place, as well as funding in key service areas such as CAMHS who's waiting lists render them pretty much useless when they are very much needed. Make sure there are sufficient police on the streets, doctors in hospitals, nurses in schools and across the health service, as well as looking at the need for free school meals across the year, housing services, full time increases in universal credit etc. In other words, think very carefully next time you are asked to vote in a Government and consider what your priorities are. Children are not the priority of our current Government.
That article is written with the best of intentions. But I would hazard a guess the author knows nothing of what it is to work in a school and the expectations that are placed on us under normal circumstances, let alone during an unprecedented pandemic.