The Kids Ain't Behavin'

Poor behaviour is a problem in schools but it will not improve by teachers going on strike

Photo by Gabriel Rodrigues on Unsplash

A recent survey of 5,800 teachers finds that more than 80 per cent think pupils’ behaviour has worsened over the past 12 months. Alarmingly, the research conducted by the union NASUWT, reports that twenty per cent of respondents had been hit or punched by pupils and 25 per cent suffer verbal abuse several times a week.

Perhaps we should not be surprised. After all, poor behaviour is a long-standing concern of teachers. Old news coverage and school inspectorate records reveal graphic accounts of bad behaviour in the classroom. According to one report from the late 1940s:

a group of boys at a Staffordshire school decided to kill their headteacher. Armed with rifles, they confronted another teacher who they shot dead instead. In court, the ringleader said he was “sorry it was not the headteacher, but it was no good leaving the victim alive after I had shot him once”.

More mundane accounts from the time recall teachers who ‘could not maintain order at all’ and ‘classes conducted amidst continuous chaos’.

Back in 2018, I undertook research on pupils’ behaviour in schools for Policy Exchange. Titled ‘It Just Grinds You Down’, my report drew attention less to particular shocking incidents and more to the persistent disruptive behaviour that can create a sense of ‘continuous chaos’ in the classroom.

I found that incidents of pupils engaging in violent, criminal or dangerous behaviour such as fighting, smoking or taking drugs in school were relatively rare. However, ‘low level’ disruptive behaviour, such as arriving late for lessons, talking at the same time as a teacher, inappropriate use of mobile phones, chewing gum or not doing the work set, was far more common. Although each individual incident might be fairly trivial, the cumulative impact of this persistent ‘low level’ disruption ‘ground down’ teachers.

Whenever we discuss pupil behaviour then, it is important to keep a sense of perspective and not fall into the trap of assuming perennial decline. At the same time, rather than focusing solely on extreme and shocking examples, we should also consider the impact of continual, low level disruption on teaching and learning.

So what to make of the latest NASUWT survey? Clearly, some things really have changed over time. Back in 2018, I confidently declared that, ‘rates of persistent absence have fallen substantially since 2011.’ We know that, post-pandemic lockdowns, this is no longer the case. Twenty per cent of pupils were classed as being ‘persistently absent’ in the 23/24 school year, compared to 10.9 per cent in 18/19. Persistent absence is defined as missing 10 per cent or more school ‘sessions’, or, roughly, one afternoon a week. It is not hard to imagine the high levels of disruption caused by a fifth of pupils missing lessons so frequently.

Something else that has changed is the way adults respond to badly behaved pupils. Back in the 1950s, the governor of a London school gripped by ill-discipline,

demanded to know whether corporal punishment was used enough. “Regularly” replied the senior inspector. “The problem is one of leadership.”

Thankfully, corporal punishment has long been outlawed. But the ‘problem of leadership’ remains.

The Sunday Times reports that teachers at two schools are currently taking strike action in protest at poor pupil behavior. One striking teacher points to children, ‘swearing at teachers, throwing chairs, posting offensive videos of staff on social media, making homophobic and sexist comments, and disrupting lessons.’ Teachers at schools in Scotland, Wales and Kent have also recently walked out of the classroom in response to ‘dangerous’ behaviour.

Certainly no teacher - or pupil - should feel in danger while at school. But adults who withdraw from the classroom in response to poor behaviour show the ‘problem of leadership’ does, indeed, remain. Another way of thinking about this is in relation to adult authority. As a former secondary school teacher myself, I know all too well that children are experts at detecting adults who lack confidence in their own authority.

Teachers who do not stand up to badly behaved pupils, but stand outside schools holding placards, make abundantly clear their own lack of authority.

More so than in the 1950s, authority is itself called into question today. It is no longer considered a positive value that teachers should aspire to posess. All too often, authority is confused with being ‘authoritarian’ and nostalgia for corporal punishment.

Today, many schools do not expect teachers to demonstrate authority in the classroom but to cultivate a therapeutic ethos. Rather than exercising discipline they expect teachers to engage in pseudo-psychological interventions such as mindfulness, meditation and circle time. Rather than punishing miscreants teachers are expected to diagnose them with a mental health condition and rather than making demands of pupils they are expected to change their own behaviour.

There are several reasons for this move away from authority and towards therapy. A broader cultural shift means people are increasingly perceived as vulnerable and victims of their upbringing and circumstances. Children in particular are considered to suffer from poor parenting and technology-overload. Schools are no longer places where children leave their problems at the door, instead they bring them in to the classroom to be analysed. All of this means bad behaviour is considered a ‘symptom’ to be treated rather than a deliberate act a child can control.

More specifically in relation to education, teachers have abandoned the source of their authority in the classroom: subject knowledge. For several decades now, being ‘child centred’ has been regarded more highly by school leaders than being an expert in an academic discipline. Subject knowledge is not needed for teaching lessons in relationships and sex education and, in classes such as English or history, academic knowledge now sits below ‘lived experience’.

It seems that, with few notable exceptions, many schools today are still gripped by the ‘problem of leadership’. Teachers who go on strike in response to badly behaved pupils exacerbate the collapse of adult authority further.

A good way for teachers to start reclaiming authority is for them to remember what they have that pupils lack: not an instruction manual in how to meditate but substantive knowledge in an academic subject.