How our schools lost control
Pupils are protesting and rioting and teachers seem incapable of stopping it.
Teachers are not the only ones striking in Britain’s schools – now pupils are at it, too. Across the country last week, children were downing pens and picking up placards.
At a school in Oxfordshire, pupils demonstrated in opposition to the introduction of a gender-neutral uniform. In Merseyside, pupils protested against skirt-length inspections. In Cornwall, children ‘flipped tables and chanted while shaking fences’ over the introduction of stricter rules on toilet breaks. Video footage, widely circulated on TikTok, shows some incidents are more akin to brawls or even riots than organised demonstrations.
Lockdowns have likely contributed to this spate of pupil unrest, with schools struggling to get back to normal. Having spent the best part of two years arguing that sitting in a classroom is unnecessary, teachers still face a near five per cent drop in pupil attendance from pre-pandemic levels. This means that each day thousands of children are falling further behind in their own learning by staying at home, and disrupting their peers when they do turn up to school. Headteachers, unable to get a grip on attendance, are also finding it difficult to enforce discipline.
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Teachers are not the only ones striking in Britain’s schools – now pupils are at it, too. Across the country last week, children were downing pens and picking up placards.
At a school in Oxfordshire, pupils demonstrated in opposition to the introduction of a gender-neutral uniform. In Merseyside, pupils protested against skirt-length inspections. In Cornwall, children ‘flipped tables and chanted while shaking fences’ over the introduction of stricter rules on toilet breaks. Video footage, widely circulated on TikTok, shows some incidents are more akin to brawls or even riots than organised demonstrations.
Lockdowns have likely contributed to this spate of pupil unrest, with schools struggling to get back to normal. Having spent the best part of two years arguing that sitting in a classroom is unnecessary, teachers still face a near five per cent drop in pupil attendance from pre-pandemic levels. This means that each day thousands of children are falling further behind in their own learning by staying at home, and disrupting their peers when they do turn up to school. Headteachers, unable to get a grip on attendance, are also finding it difficult to enforce discipline.
But there’s something else going on, too. These restive young people seem to be responding to the fact that teachers and parents have effectively been sanctioning pupil protests for several years. Back in 2016, groups of parents kept their children at home to protest against standardised tests. And in 2019 many parents and teachers allowed children to participate in Greta Thunberg’s school strikes against climate change. As I wrote at the time, the praise adults lavished on the striking children meant the protests were less an act of rebellion and more like a school trip.