Lack of discipline in schools is the fault of head teachers

[GooseyLoosey]

I was listening to the radio yesterday and the Chairman of the National Association of Head Teachers was being interviewed (about an OECD report that smaller class sizes do not corelate to better education, but that's a whoel other thread). He said that poor discipline in schools was not the fault of parents or due to any societal trends but due to poor head teachers.

He argued that what maintained discipline in a school were effective sanctions put in place by the head which all teachers imposed and which the head back them up with. If a head cannot impose discipline, the implication was that they were ineffective and weak.

Do you agree with this? There is a huge bullying problem in my son's school and I was recently told by a teacher that they "just did not know what to do". That seemed wrong to me at the time and was the first time that I have really questioned the management of the school as it does not appear to me that that should ever be an appropriate response.

Nope.

Bet his staff don't think that either.

The issues that very often lead to poor discipline is schools often have their roots in that DC's very conception and are pretty much set in stone by the age of 3, sadly (which is why SureStart was a good idea, albeit possibly too late for a lot of 'families').

Lack of discipline in schools starts at home. The school has the DC from the age of 4 for maybe what, 25 contact hours a week? 39 weeks a year? The rest of the time they are in the 'care' of their families, learning and copying the behaviours they witness.

I would readily agree that many HT have been hamstrung by the governors when it comes to imposing effective discipline for fear of an OFSTED backlash, mind.

Successful educational outcomes require 3 to tango: child, teacher, parent. If one isn't on side, you have a problem. SO at worst, a school can only be considered to be 'a third' to 'blame'!

PS I am not a teacher nor do I have any involvement beyond that of being a parent is my DCs schools!

If you've got horrible, nasty, disruptive children in schools then get rid of them. People often say to me get rid of them to where? I don't care where they go, to the moon if necessary. Just get rid.

I have to say when DS was being bullied it became clear the lack of a plan / action stemmed from the top. Lunchtimes were a real issue so IMO it wasn't down to teachers but inadequate cover and lack of sanctions.

learnandsay I hope you are trolling with that remark. What do you think happens to all those children who are just 'sent elsewhere' when they grow up? They become even more disaffected teenagers and dangerously criminal adults. Is that the world you want your children to rejoin after they have left the cosy school with no difficult children you sent them to for 13 years?

I do think a weak ineffective head can lead to discipline problems, especially if the school is also full of disruptive children.

My vague impression from years of skim-reading parenting studies on the interweb is that it hardly matters what kind of discipline you have as a parent, as long as you are consistent [epic fail here but that's not the issue at hand].

Hence I think a large part of the head's job is deciding what the behaviour management strategy is, communicating it to the whole school and badgering supporting the whole staff team to use it. If a head falls down at that job, then yes, poor discipline can be the head's 'fault'.

I think even a strong head can only do so much because of there are so many stupid rules. Perhaps the solution is to send all the problem children to learnandsay's child's school where they will be got rid of

There is no doubt that discipline starts at home and if children are allowed to get away with everything at home then they will always assume that they can get away with it at school.
However the gentleman from NAHT is totally correct that the head teacher sets the tone of discipline and behaviour in the school. If the child with poor home discipline is allowed to they will do the same at school. However if the school, with the headteacher leading from the front, ensures that the child knows that any bad behaviour will not be accepted and sanctions will follow then in many cases the child can learn to accept the behaviour policy of the school.
The head teacher is the manager in charge and as such sets the rules and if their rules do not result in good discipline then they need to change the rules or move on and let someone who will get it right do the job.

until the LEA over rule the head

mrz: how did the 'behaviour tsar' guidelines for behaviour management in schools (issued Oct 11, som twenty points each for heads and for teachers).

For it seems as if it might have sunk without trace.

Just as a point...

Lots of rules in schools make no sense. As a teacher, there are lots of things I have to enforce that I don't agree with, but they are the rules and the children have to abide by them, even if they too don't agree.

The problem comes, IMO, when the parents don't agree with the rules and undermine the school and the teachers by trying to break them or making it clear to their children that they think they are pointless.

Take for example two recent threads on here. A current one about hot food in flasks, and one about water vs juice in the classroom. However much people are pro juice and anti water, pro flasks anti "health and safety gone mad", the school has made a rule.

If that parent breaks the rules, and makes their child an accomplice too, then how is that teaching their child to respect the rules or the authority of the school? How can that parent then be surprised when their child breaks a different school rule, because maybe the child doesn't agree with it?

I think parents and schools should be a joint force, and it worries me when parents bad-mouth the running of the school to their children. I'm not saying all parents must agree with the rules, and cannot contest them, but put on the face of support at the least, and complain without drawing attention to it.

Well he came up with useful ideas like banning fat knots in school ties Edith

I'm amazed that something as specific as that like that was one of the key points! Not least as not all schools have uniforms which include ties.

Is that publication available on line? (I'll have a google, but you might know where it may be found).

Here is the checklist I was thinking of. It's meant to be a start point from which schools develop their own check lists.

There is nothing about fat ties in it. It seems to chime closely with what OP says the chair of NAHT is saying. Perhaps the ideas therein are gaining ground?

The trouble is - when we went to school, if you came home and told your Mum you had been in trouble, you got in trouble with Mum for being in trouble at school.
Nowadays, if children go home and say they've been in trouble, parents immediately come into school and blame the teachers for making their children behave badly (!)
Its all part of the blame culture and teachers (and Headteachers) are stuck between a rock and a hard place - blamed by parents if we do discipline and blamed by parents if we don't!

is there a maximum recommended width suggested there mrz? ...

media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/pdf/b/behaviour%20and%20discipline%20in%20schools%20-%20a%20guide%20for%20headteachers%20and%20school%20staff.pdf

www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6105712

www.express.co.uk/features/view/279159/Pupils-spat-at-me-so-often-I-bought-a-washable-suit-says-behaviour-czar

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8426700/Ban-fat-knot-school-ties-says-behaviour-tsar.html

You can have good teachers in a school with pupils who have not been parented effectively as suggested earlier, that is managed by an ineffective HT. The teachers can do as much as they can and follow the behaviour poilcy but what happens if they do their part but the SMt and HT fails at their level? Chn don't go to detentions and get referred up the ladder but then what? chn call a teacher a fucking cunt in the presence of the deputy and very little happens. They tell a teacher to fuck off and after 10 mins out, the teacher is asked if the child can come back in because they have apologised and yet the procedure re warnings given was followed before SMT were called.
The way I see it, if the HT puts in place a well thought out and tested policy and then manages it in a practical way, then they can manage the staff and the staff and pupils will know what WILL happen. EVERY TIME. implemented by ALL STAFF. No matter what the homelife or attitude of the parents is, the school has to be firm and consistent.

I totally understand that HT often have their hands tied by the LA and know of some who have been shafted by the LA making promises they don't keep. Exclusion does need to be available but not overly easy. It should not be about targets but individual cases. I am sure that Law Courts aren't given targets depending on where they are in the country.

Behaviour and discipline IS an issue and as a teacher you can only do so much.
How many schools have those signs like at Doctors Surgeries that say agression towards staff will not be tolerated but they are placed at reception and are aimed at parents. What about from the pupils? If they do it at Tesco they get chucked out and banned. At my Dh? Taken out after an hour of waiting for SMT to come and then had a chat with. He is a person who deserves to feel safe at work. I should not have to worry about him at school. This is not the problem of the parents. The HT needs to LEAD and not accept shittiness against his teachers. Aim for the moon even if you don't believe you will actually get there. Who knows what might happen.

I am a little hot under the collar now. Bit close to home.

Oh and re small classes not being significant. i will accept that when they choose a LA and try it across a town. I bet my house they would notice a difference, not only in standards but alo in behaviour.

Ds is apparently not well-behaved at school so I discovered at parents evening. Since he behaves at home and at out of school activities I put his ill discipline fairly and squarely down to his teacher. She didn't like that at all. I think good discipline feeds down from the head. Our school is less disciplined under our current head than it was under our old one (who retired but is younger than current head).

I told ds's teacher that ds likes getting detention so maybe she should think of an alternative punishment for him. She was speechless.

TheProvincial, if only I were trolling, whatever you mean by that. No, I'm deadly serious. I realise that there are discussions on the BBC news website about increasing educational provisions at today's reform schools, (whatever their official title might be in the modern world.) The implication being that if they're sent to a lock-up facility and then released uneducated on an unsuspecting public they'll become tomorrow's criminals. Well, that's probably true. But if they weren't socialised enough to fit into the mainstream school system in the first place they'd probably have become tomorrow's criminals anyway. I think some of them are today's criminals as we speak.

Do I think that we should teach some of today's and tomorrow's criminals alongside my daughter out of a misguided sense of their well-being? Absolutely not. I think disruptive, abusive and downright nasty kids should be given every opportunity to be as horrible as they like in secure institutions where they get locked up at night and there are dogs patrolling the fences.

Okaaay...do you write in to your local paper often, by any chance?

I do think it can be a factor. I have certainly witnessed it in both schools my DD1 and subsequent children attended. There is a certain sense that the bully or the aggressor is a victim, in a way, and I can see it from both sides. They are the ones that will have the most problems in the future. Still it was my son and daughter who suffered at the time so I could only see it from my perspective.

My children have learned the hard way to take a huge birth from nasty children. These by the way can be found in ANY school - certainly I can think of a couple in my son's class from very wealthy/professional families - observing their behaviour you'd think they have been brought up in a gutter - I am talking spitting, swearing, kicking, etc...

Still, at least I live in hope that my children will continue to manage to keep away. One of the parents I know called the police when her daughter at our school was repeatedly assaulted and the head wouldn't do anything about it. It got immediately resolved. I wouldn't think twice of doing the same should it ever become that bad, tbh.

... what maintained discipline in a school were effective sanctions put in place by the head which all teachers imposed and which the head back them up with. If a head cannot impose discipline, the implication was that they were ineffective and weak ...

I agree.

... bullying problem in my son's school and I was recently told by a teacher that they "just did not know what to do". That seemed wrong to me ...

If what you say is correct, this is very wrong. It's the sign of a weak school that may well have other problems.