In a powerful contribution to Platform, early last month, Graeme Archer brought alive the problem of school breakdown.
It is a MASSIVE problem. 140,000 pupils were suspended from secondary schools in 2005/06 for violence or persistent disruption. The rate of suspension is twelve times higher in the most deprived areas than in the least. Surveys of teachers suggest that a third have been physically attacked and one-in-five threatened with a weapon. Early retirement amongst teachers has tripled. As Justice Coleridge said on Saturday: family breakdown is the leading cause of these and other social problems.
The Tories already have a growing policy platform to renew the family (although it needs to be much bolder) and today, David Cameron and Michael Gove announce their school discipline strategy for Giving Power Back To Teachers. Measures include:
- Parents will lose the right to appeal to a tribunal and overturn a headteacher's decision to exclude a disruptive pupil;
- Abolition of Labour's new idea that schools must take in one excluded child for every child they exclude;
- Ending the financial penalty that means a school loses a whole year's funding for an excluded child even if many months of costs have been incurred.
- Bonuses for teachers who take effective action against disruptive pupils.
Other measures are set out in the full document - a PDF of which you can read here.
A Telegraph leader - unfairly - describes the Tory ideas as "a painfully cautious step in the right direction". The Telegraph is much more impressed with Gordon Brown's ideas on army cadet forces:
"Much more encouraging is that Gordon Brown appears to favour cadet forces, and is keen to increase their number in comprehensive schools. The objection that delinquent pupils will flock to use the guns is nonsense: they will be put off by the uniforms and the discipline. And the primary function of a cadet force is not to train children for military service, but to inculcate initiative and responsibility. Young people who have been answerable, not just for the performance and safety, but for the behaviour of others, make better citizens and better parents. If the Prime Minister understands this, in defiance of his own party's pacifist dogma, we applaud him for it - and we wish him luck."
We'd urge The Telegraph to be more cautious. The Brown-Blair years have often been characterised by good ideas - and this is another - but they've been more associated with inept implementation. Britain no longer wants a government good at announcements but it craves one that will get things done.
Since the link doesn't work, I can't read the detail yet.
Much of this is most welcome - appeals panels, financial penalties, one-for-one are all Labour attempts to reduce exclusions. Dealing with excluded students is another matter - will we re-open the necessary small schools for those excluded?
From my perspective a more annoying Labour policy is that students excluded for more than five days have to have educational provision funded and supplied by the school. This means that when budgets are tight (when aren't they?) violently disruptive students are only excluded for five days to avoid the school having to pay for anything. Let's get rid of that, for goodness sake!
Finally, as a CCF Officer, I suppose I should welcome the PM's announcement. It's all been announced before of course and if there is new money for it then...oh there's no new money? What a surprise. CCFs can be very good if they are well run but many have had bad experiences - opportunities for student leadership can mean opportunities for bullying. Much of this is in the past of course but I have seen things in other contingents. The ACF are a bit miffed that they have not been praised, as many of them have filled the absence of CCFs in areas without them. They can do a first-rate job too.
Posted by: Tim Worrall | April 07, 2008 at 09:06
"Gordon Brown appears to favour cadet forces, and is keen to increase their number in comprehensive schools."
-and where will the funding come from? He who pays the piper calls the tune....
Citizenship in the classrooms, Brown Youth in the corridors, maybe I'm just paranoid, but isn't anyone else just a little concerned about the direction of this latest political initiative aimed at our youth?
Posted by: Deborah | April 07, 2008 at 09:47
How can you give bonuses to teachers who kick pupils out of school? Isn't this a little open to abuse?!?!
Unless the Conservatives find an effective way of re-educating pupils who are disruptive, this cycle will never be broken.
Posted by: Letters From A Tory | April 07, 2008 at 09:58
The link is now active, Tim Worrall.
Posted by: James Maskell | April 07, 2008 at 10:03
As long as the word of an habitual troublemaker or congenital liar is deemed by the proponents of children’s rights to be as reliable as that of an experienced and well-respected teacher then discipline will never be established in schools. Consequent upon this failure is the lack of respect for legitimate authority that blights our society and makes the work of public servants, including police, fire-fighters and hospital staff at best inefficient and at worst impossible.
Posted by: Pooter | April 07, 2008 at 10:16
I found this comment on Conservatives.com concerning today's launch of 'Giving Power back to Teachers':
'I never thought I could vote conservative
As a pupil at a state secondary school in the 1980s and now as a teacher it amazes me that for so long we have allowed a persistent hardcore of anti-social teenagers to devestate the education of so many others. You will have to take a big hit on this - it will cost a lot of time and money to deal with these youngsters outside of school but it is already costing the rest of us hugely by keeping them in schools. If more ministers and their children had attended state schools over the years this would never have been allowed to happen. The fact is it is utterly intolerable except for those who can afford to opt out and go private.There are teachers who can deal with the very worst pupils but these are exceptionally gifted individuals and we cannot expect this of the whole profession. I have never voted conservative in my life - I'm of a background that would find it EXTREMELY hard to do so. I still can't forgive you for your support of the Iraq war BUT if you hold your nerve and actually follow through on this policy I will vote for you next time.
Posted by Francis on Mon, 07 Apr 2008 10:05:21 GMT'
Posted by: Conand | April 07, 2008 at 10:16
I saw it too, Conand. To be able to post you would have to sign up to the website and have an interest in the Party. I suspect this is a CCHQer.
It is a working paper at the moment, just throwing the ideas round.
Posted by: James Maskell | April 07, 2008 at 10:24
Problems of disorder in schools are related to class size. That should be the area where government must set its focus. More must be done to make parents accountable for badly behaved children. A financial penalty everytime the child misbehaves will force the parents attention and make them more likely to demand good behaviour from their child.
Posted by: Tony Makara | April 07, 2008 at 10:28
James it feels real to me. I really hope I'm not being naive.
Posted by: Conand | April 07, 2008 at 10:29
I could be wrong, but Im highly cynical of comments on official websites. CCHQ goes through each message and anything too bad gets deleted. Its pretty arbitrary about it I find.
Posted by: James Maskell | April 07, 2008 at 11:00
I find a few things puzzling with this type of subject.
How can you make a parent responsible for their child’s behaviour when parents have no authority over their kids anymore? The best that a parent can hope for is to try to use their personality to try to control their off spring (a bit like teachers really).
A parent has no real authority anymore. The more responsibility that a parent has taken away from them the less they will be inclined to take.
What happens when a child does not wish to be “reasoned with” either in the home or classroom? The adult has few rights and indeed we are now living in the era when it is the adults who are seen but not heard.
Physically chastise a child and you will probably be charged with ABH. Restrain a child and you risk being charged with common assault or ABH (that even applies to parents), and if the CPS cannot get you on a criminal charge you will find that social services will get you another way. Oh, if you work in the public sector standing up to unruly kids will probably signal the end of your career.
So what is being proposed here is the usual complete and utter crap. Every politician knows what the problems are, but are to scared to stand up to the likes of the Children’s Commissioner (all four of them!) and the children’s rights industry in general. That said many politicians on all sides secretly agree with the ideological dogma that underpins this mindset. When the Children and Young Persons Bill comes back to the commons, let’s see how many of our own MPs back a free vote being proposed again from the labour back benches, to ban the last remaining rights of parents to smack (sorry tap) their children.
The best way of helping kids is to protect them from themselves. That means being brought up in an orderly and disciplined environment. Of course this will never happen in the foreseeable future, despite what our leadership say, as they seem as unwilling to face facts as the other lot.
Here’s to another generation of uneducated delinquent kids attacking each other, us, and our property, while killing themselves through violence, drink, drugs or all three.
Well done, their rights it seems knows no bounds.
Posted by: Hardcore Conservative | April 07, 2008 at 15:54
I have the opposite view to that of te Telegraph. If Cameron wins the next electionand Gove is able to enact these proposals then the benefit will be significant to thosands of schoolchildren.
In the unlikely event of Brown actually establishing CCF groups throughout state schools in Britain then the benefits will argely be restricted tothe small minority of pupils interested in military service.I am very suprised (and rather delighted) that this dea came from Brown. Perhaps he doesn't dislike the armed forces as much as I'd thought or perhas he's gettng desperate to come up with a popular idea
Posted by: Malcolm Dunn | April 07, 2008 at 16:01
After a certain point, she became impassive, detached utterly from him
Posted by: Shox NZ, | January 11, 2011 at 10:09