Stop / reduce suspensions for disruptive and vulnerable children

[HooverIsAlwaysBroken]

https://amp.theguardian.com/education/article/2024/jul/20/english-schools-to-phase-out-cruel-behaviour-rules-as-labour-plans-major-education-changes

I would be interested in what people think about this. Being shy and bullied (and very academic) as a child, I would be inclined to feel sorry for the children who just are trying to learn. I would also assume that this will make it much harder for the teachers…

of course the vulnerable and disruptive children need support but is this the right way? My DS is very disruptive and has had numerous detentions but never a suspension. I would assume that the bar for that already is very high? But happy to be told otherwise.

@Octavia64

None of that addresses the concerns. I'm not talking about him, I'm talking about the wider societal impacts on the other students having daily violence perpetrated against them and having it systematically dismissed and ignored. No, not even dismissed and ignored, actively having the perpetrator of the violence coddled and reinforced.

Unlikely. There will probably be more impact in places like Surrey and Edinburgh which have a higher than average proportion in the private sector, but because the numbers in private schools are tiny compared to those in state, it shouldn't significantly increase existing issues, large as those are. Some smaller schools and sixth forms will be in trouble and some subjects will suffer (modern languages, Classics, music). It will accelerate the trend for specialist education in the arts to be the preserve of those who can afford to pay.

Parents will also wait for natural break points (change from primary to secondary, start or end of GCSE or A-level) to move children if they possibly can. And while schools will have to charge VAT, the actual cost may not go up 20% as they may choose to absorb some of the tax.

The furore has, however, distracted from serious problems such as the fact that so many buildings aren't fit for purpose. The cancellation of Building Schools for the future was 2010! That's 14 years of decay before you even contemplate RAAC and PFI issues.

Spare us the bollocks spouted by people who have no idea what it's to be like in a classroom where there is a kid who is constantly pissing around, shouting, winding up other kids, throwing things and absolutely not letting you teach in any meaningful way at all, and there is no way to get rid of them.

I'm not the only teacher who has had a school who has gone through the Paul Dix process of removing isolation rooms, emphasis on keeping disruptive kids in classrooms, and of 'restorative conversations' being the only sanction for wrecking the education of the other 29 kids in the room (who also start pissing about because there's nothing else to do). Behaviour plummets, teachers quit en masse and then the school realises that there's an issue and slowly re-introduces a room you can send kids who are pissing around to, sanctions that are inconvenient for the pupil but not the teacher, and the expectation that children should be allowed to learn.

An isolation room is not isolation booths. It is a room where you can remove disruptive kids to. If the government decide that schools don't need a room where you can remove disruptive kids to, then that will be a disaster for classroom teachers. Been there, done that, I've never been so close to quitting teaching.

I have friends that are teachers, they are in their fifties and pupil behaviour over their careers has deteriorated a lot.

Baroness Warnock recommendations encouraged inclusivity in schools and led to the closure of many schools for children with special ed needs. Twenty four years later she did a massive U turn and said it was a mistake.

So you have multiple issues with pupils, ones whose needs are not met due to them having special educational needs and then ones who are quite frankly not parented, the sort whose parents will buy them an e scooter and buy them booze at 14 and maybe even get drunk with them. Or ones who will just never say no to their kids, they would never deem themselves a problem may be very respectable folk but take gentle parenting to a daft level. All very different issues. The ones who really suffer are the children of average intelligence and below who end up in classes with more of a chance of the worst behaviour.

@DanceSingandhavefun I agree completely with you, it’s an unsavoury truth and those kids who are like that end up being the ones that end up doing bad stuff, risk of crime etc. DH and I are respectable as dull as that sounds but some of my family are massively dodgy. My nephews have been in prison a few times. My sister married a guy with a criminal record whose Father also had a criminal record. They have been cut off compeltley by me many years ago. I remember them being little shits at school, absolutely feral. My sister and partner didn’t care. The last time I saw my sister at her house, her kids were about 14 and I remember my other sister who was also there said don’t leave your bag in the hall. That was 20 years ago. I decided at that point to keep my children away from that entire side of the family. DS was a toddler and has no memory of them.

@Moglet4 yes kids with IDENTIFIED send. I guarantee there's a huge chunk in school who didn't have it identified hence the 'bad' behaviour. We had a nightmare getting our autistic children's needs recognised in school even with diagnoses in place. It took multiple appeals for EHCPs and a fights for specialist provision. I've lodged my ninth SENDIST appeal this year to ensure there needs are met. It's ridiculous. So just imagine what happens to the kids who don't have parents like me and whose schools refuse to recognise their send. In fact we don't need to imagine, they get suspended, excluded and off rolled. In fact a school tried very hard to offroll my child once I applied for an EHCP. They couldn't exclude as they never showed that type of behaviour to warrant it - at school.

I was hoping this would happen. The twin pillars of conservative education policy were underfunding and Victorian ideas on discipline. The outcome was a lack of adequate provision for children with adhd and asd, the distressed behaviour (and lashing out) that flows from that, and a convenient and government approved discipline policy on exclusion to enable the blaming of vulnerable children for school leadership failure. And then the kids were divided. NT equalled good / ND equalled bad. And all the talk of inclusion was to cover this reality. We lived it and know so many other parents that did too. It was a national scandal of epic proportions, but somewhat underreported, by which I mean the exclusions scandal to exile ND children from any form of reasonable education.

Good on them.

And a big Sunday fuck you to all the handwringers who are against it.

If you want adequate provision for kids with ASD then absolutely you do not want a policy which means they will be in a class with kids who have free rein to piss around.

A large part of the problem is that school isn’t suitable for large numbers of young people. Sitting still in a crowded classroom listening to a teacher is not what young People’s brains and bodies are designed for, and those who are not academic become disengaged. We need to make education something that works for everyone, with more practical subjects and work skills, especially for lower ability students.

I work with 16 - 19 age group and huge numbers leave school with absolutely nothing to show for it. What a waste. They could have been getting work experience and learning life skills.

And yet in colleges we are being told these students need to be taught Pythagoras theory and 19th century texts and keep retaking GCSEs which we all know they will never pass.

This. The other pupils aren't just seeing violence. From your own example octavia they were regularly getting punched in the face, but hey no compassion for them?

All I can hope is that in years to come there will be a class action lawsuit against the education department for denying the other students a full education and the lasting trauma of having to endure physical and emotional abuse enabled by the schools every day of their childhoods.

I agree that send provision is beyond dire but I’m still unsure why you assume that every naughty child must have SEND rather than just being plain naughty. With a lot it’s bleedingLy obvious why they behave the way they do the minute you meet their parents and it has absolutely nothing to do with unidentified additional needs

@Beth216 he was canned for some minor misdemeanour- I can’t remember what. The point I was trying to make was that this was a once in primary school occurrence. We all knew what would happen if you stepped out of line and as a consequence poor behaviour was rare.
look at any country with court imposed corporal punishment for crimes. It’s not a coincidence that they have lower crime rates.

Absolutely! Also never ever let anyone like Gove near the English curriculum ever again!

Yep. Teacher I know came back from teaching overseas with her teacher spouse to teach here a couple of years ago. Lasted 1 school year, and were already looking to go before the school year was up. They packed up and moved their family to Dubai to teach there as soon as the school year ended: better pay, better conditions, better lifestyle, treated with respect. THe kind of abuse teachers are forced to put up with DAILY here is just not accepted elsewhere.

People need to consider how they will feel when students who are aggressive and disruptive disturb learning or physically harm or frighten their kids. Schools are stuck. There are kids whose behaviour is unmanageable in school. These kids are given time out cards and support from pastoral staff. They have bespoke timetables containing days in outdoor learning facilities. They still cannot manage to be in mainstream classes without disturbing the learning of others. They still end up in physical and verbal confrontations with others.

There is a false narrative that kids are not helped and are just isolated and excluded. This really isn't the case. I work in secondary. Huge amounts of time and resources go to help these kids. They simply don't change the end result. It takes a long time, a lot of interventions and support before exclusions. Schools are not miracle workers. They can't always fix poor parenting. They can't meet the needs of all kids with send. They can't always mitigate and heal trauma.

This new direction is just blaming schools for societal problems. It will make Schools less safe for all. It will deepen teacher recruitment problems.

We have quite a few of those parents.

Their children aren't getting an education due to the lack of support/available grownups/etc and they're destroying the education of many others via their disruptive behaviour.

It's awful.

It will only get worse.

I work in primary year 6 as 1-2-1 TA for challenging children.

When they disrupt the class or start fights etc, I take them out. Unfortunately, when they move onto secondary they don’t have a TA following them, so not surprising, they end up permanently excluded.

Behaviour management appears to be one of the main reasons teachers are leaving already.

You seem to suggest that all disruptive kids are ND, and there are no little shits who are not parented in any meaningful way?

I appreciate you may be a parent of an ND kid that did not get any support at school, and I agree there should be more SEN support - but ruining the education for everyone else in class is not the answer.

Discipline = bad
Getting punched in the face every single day without recourse = good

Got you.

Spoken by someone who clearly doesn't teach in an underfunded school with classes where 30-50% of the children have special needs and/or behavioural issues of varying kinds and no support staff available to help.

The older they get, the more consequences should mirror those of the adult world and the workplace where you can't refuse to do your work, disrupt the office, shout over your colleagues, kick the doors in and expect not to be fired. They need to learn this through experience at school.

Are you a teacher? You sound well-meaning but entirely ignorant of the war zone many classrooms have become and the realities of trying to teach huge classes of widely different ability levels. We need to go back to integration. Inclusion has failed. You end up with a couple of children wrecking the learning of 30 others. It is heart breaking. Children who want to learn, progress and succeed are prevented from doing so because of stupid initiatives like this. Dreamt up by people who haven’t set foot in a classroom for 20 years. Put disruptive children into a hub in mainstream schools and teach them there. They are still physically in school.

@Meowzabubz

Not what I said though is it.

More funding. More training. More TAs in each classroom with the teacher. Smaller class sizes. Buildings that are not full of asbestos and RAC.

You know, the simple things that the last government thought Teachers and Pupils could manage without.

Stop blaming kids with additional needs for policy choices made by the previous government.

Sending kids to borstal is not the answer.

Well yes, unless the discipline is directed at a member of staff who uses a tone of voice disliked by pupil and parent.
Then it's mn 'guns blazing, scorched earth demanding teacher disciplinary' as the only possible route!

I wonder what those of you who are pleased with this article and agree that scrapping removal rooms and fixed-term exclusions is a good thing, think teachers should have in place as an alternative?