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David Moore said that he had
spent twenty years as an HMI and, previously, he had been a
headmaster and had taught in inner-city schools and also in
rural
Norfolk
. His present responsibilities at
Ofsted are concerned with behaviour, attendance and
exclusions in schools, whilst his previous work as an HMI
had been concerned with the school curriculum, and where he
had initiated meetings with parents and children into the
inspection process. Recently, he had been a member of the
Steer Committee – the Practitioner Group on School
Behaviour and Discipline – whose report to the Minister of
State at the Department for Education and Skills, Learning
Behaviour, was published in October 2005.
His
experience showed him that good and effective teaching
minimises the occurrence of bad behaviour, and he reckoned
that 80 per cent of destructive behaviour is related to bad
teaching; whilst in a good learning environment children
with difficulties at home modify their behaviour.
But bad behaviour in school is not new; a 4,000
year-old papyrus talks about boys being unsuitable for
selection as scribes because of their behaviour in class.
The
Steer Committee
was set up because there was a belief that behaviour had got
worse. Members of the committee were mostly head teachers
nominated by the DfES, and representatives of professional
associations. David
Moore’s philosophy is that there is no one, single model
teaching method, but it is rather a question of whether a
teaching method works for a particular situation; for
instance for mixed ability groups, or where there is selection
by ability. A significant factor is that since 1989 teachers
have no longer been taught child development and psychology
at training colleges: this
has led to difficulties because people tend to judge
children’s behaviour by their own experience as a child,
or as a parent.
For
the last twenty years there has been an
underclass with different attitudes to education. This
underclass is pre-occupied with how to survive; for instance
how to repay outstanding loans, rather than spending time
encouraging their children to do well at school.
This underclass often live ‘sink estates’ where
many people lack the skills to get a job and this leads to a
dependency culture. Children
can have either high aspirations or no aspirations at all,
and this leads to children being bullied because they are
swots.
Heads
need to decide what will be the culture of their school – the norms for the community to function.
Where a school has struggled to manage behaviour, the
weakness is often in the lack of consistency with which the teachers apply the rules. For instance a
child may be allowed, against the rules, to keep his
overcoat on in a lesson by one teacher, but not by another
teacher. An important school rule is that children should
not ‘name call’, and the teacher must challenge this
every time it happens, otherwise they are condoning it. Safety
in school is paramount; surveys show that parents have an
overriding need from a school that their child should be
safe. Pupils also say they want to be safe. The need of
children to feel safe is shown by the fact that children
will grass on someone who has a knife.
Teachers
must take into account the background of the children. The reading age of the criminal
community ranges from six and a half years to ten years.
Two-thirds of all prisoners on remand have a reading age of
below ten years. Teachers
should be aware that the reading age will affect how
children cope with tasks set by the teacher, and that they
cannot bear being
shown up in front of their peers as being unable to read. It
follows that schools which have an intake which is uniform
in character, don’t have the same problems as those
teaching in a mixed catchment area: a mixed area can be more
difficult than an inner-city area. A few children from
social housing in a predominantly middle-class area can have
a disproportionate effect on the school.
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Children
develop in stages. Up to the age of five, children learn how
to speak, interpret expressions, and learn a value system in
the intimate circle of the home. This is followed by
learning in a circle of friendship – when, for instance
they might go to Grandma's and eat three Mars bars and are
bidden ‘don't
tell your mum’. There are also circles of participation
– swimming clubs, ballet classes, etc in which the child
learns how to cope with other adults in authority outside
the home. Children learn social skills in these circles.
Stickability
is the most important
ingredient that
children have to learn; otherwise they will walk away from
learning a skill.
If teachers don’t understand this, then teaching is
difficult because they don’t know what children can and
can’t do.
Some
children are allowed a greater degree of freedom than is good for them; for instance they
can be out engaging in ‘trick or treat’ at 10 p m.
Some parents were not given the right model when they
were children. They treat their children as equals and so in
any negotiation the child comes out on top. Reception
teachers teach children how to react with other people. Some
children come into school completely egocentric and schools
are the only places where they encounter a demand for
instant obedience to rules.
If children come from an inconsistent home and go
into a school where there is inconsistency in applying the
rules, then there will be failure. Nevertheless,
most children do their best because they want to please the
adults. The lack
of positive role models leads to most trouble in the case of
boys living with an isolated lone parent, although some
institutions such as Sure Start can play a part by
supporting the parent and so help the child to settle in
school. In
general, there is a social taboo against striking one’s
mother. If a child has crossed this social taboo there are
no boundaries: if they will take on their mother they will
take on anyone else, and so they will not respect anyone in
authority including the police or judges.
Schools
must have a
good-behaviour policy of everyone being respectful of
each other, and what this means must be defined for each
community, taking account of ethnic differences. For
example,
Caribbean
children are taught that it is
respectful ‘to look down’ when being admonished, but
this behaviour may be interpreted as defiance by a teacher.
Teachers must know that some children cannot recognise the
clues they give when stopping a pupil’s bad behaviour, for
instance by the raising of an eyebrow. If
the child cannot read this clue then the teacher may
interpret continuing bad behaviour as defiance.
In
order to learn, children need to be in a secure environment,
‘name calling’ prevents learning. Children should be
told to stop name calling because it stops everyone
learning, and this is the reason why it is banned. Any
punishment needs to be adapted to the needs of the child –
for some children the threat of telling their parent is
sufficient. It
is important that the rest of the school be told the reason
for exclusions. If
a particular exclusion is made in order to act as a
deterrent to others, then the school must be told the true
reason for expulsion– not just the child’s version.
Automatic suspensions after a certain number of
misdemeanours set up tensions. The ethos of the school and
its policies must be clearly articulated to children,
parents, and staff – for instance ‘we do not accept
verbal aggression’. Incidents
must be monitored and recorded, and what triggered them
discovered.
Summing
up, David Moore stressed that teachers must be given more understanding of child development and
psychology, including anger management, in order to stop
children taking out their frustrations on the nearest adult.
Where teachers are properly trained in child
psychology they manage their teaching better.
He
concluded by mentioning the measures in the Education Bill 2006 relating to behaviour –
a power for staff to discipline pupils, and improved
provision for excluded pupils. Schools
will in future have to make special educational provision
for excluded pupils on the sixth day of exclusion and these
arrangements will be inspected. There is also to be a pilot
scheme for giving secondary school teachers training in
child development and psychology.
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