From the good old Torygraph ...
Teachers will be given new powers to discipline pupils as part of a government plan to restore order in classrooms
by Graeme Paton, Daily Telegraph Education Editor
An education white paper being published next week will give school staff the right to confiscate mobile phones, iPods, MP3 players and other electronic gadgets. For the first time, teachers will be able to search pupils for any item they believe troublemakers can use to cause disruption during lessons.
The move follows a series of incidents in which pupils have taken photos and videos of teachers then uploaded compromising images on to the internet. Last year, Peter Harvey, a science teacher, attacked a 14-year-old boy after being goaded by students who covertly filmed the episode on a camera phone.
Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, warned that the balance of power in schools had shifted in recent years, with teachers “living in fear of breaking the rules while troublemaking students felt the law was on their side”. The reforms, which are designed to tackle bad behaviour, will give staff the power to search pupils for any item, including legal highs, pornography, cigarettes and fireworks.
Previously, teachers could only frisk pupils’ clothes and search bags without consent for weapons, drugs, alcohol and stolen goods. The white paper will also set out plans to ...
... simplify rules on the use of physical force, giving teachers more powers to remove disruptive children from the classroom without fear of legal action ...
... protect teachers from false and malicious allegations made by pupils and parents, giving them anonymity until a case reaches court ...
... give head teachers the power to expel pupils from school without the decision being overturned by an independent appeals panel ...
... allow teachers to impose “same day” detentions, scrapping rules that require schools to give parents a 24-hour warning ...
... introduce rules giving head teachers the ability to punish pupils for bad behaviour outside school.
Mr Gove said teachers “had to be respected again”.
“Under the last Government’s approach to discipline, heads and teachers lived in fear of breaking the rules while troublemaking students felt the law was on their side,” he said. “We have to stop treating adults like children and children like adults. We will ensure that the balance of power in the classroom changes and teachers are back in charge.”
The Telegraph also carried the news that there are plans for pupils to lose marks for using bad grammar and spelling in exams.
Mind you, over a year ago the Labour education minister Ed Balls was talking tough, too, when he threatened that parents of disruptive pupils could end up in court.
Still, it's all bloody good stuff. Now, Coalition Government, stop talking about it and MAKE IT HAPPEN!
The GOS says: In the Sunday Times News Review section, Chris Woodhead's column usually consists of questions about education sent in by readers, and the guru's replies. You will no doubt remember Chris Woodhead from the days when he was the first head of Ofsted. He was also the man who began the whole myth that Britain's schools are infested with useless, invulnerable teachers (they aren't: Britain's schools are infested by useless, invulnerable pupils).
As an ex-teacher the GOS still, despite his better judgement, reads this column regularly, and this week one of those useless teachers bit back. Well, not “bit” exactly. More like “slightly chewed” ...
I am tired of reading questions about “useless teachers”. I prepare thoroughly for every lesson. Most go well, but the behaviour of students in two of my classes is appalling. They enter the class screaming, shouting and throwing things around. However, I am told that the problem is mine and that I have failed to “engage” the students. What are so-called useless teachers to do, when there is no support from their senior management?
Woodhead's reply is, sadly, rather typical of the man, and very like the response of the poor teacher's senior managers: just shift the blame to someone else. He writes “Point taken. No teacher can or should be expected to deal with children who refuse to accept the conventions of normal classroom behaviour”. So far, so good.
But he goes on “It is the responsibility of senior staff to remove such children from lessons to ensure that teachers can teach, and the children who want to learn can learn”. Which begs the question “So what happens when it's half the class that won't conform?” You can just see the headlines if senior staff of a school excluded 50% of their pupils, can't you?
The point here is that the senior staff don't know how to deal with unruly youths any more than their junior teachers. Our namby-pamby approach to education has rendered children totally immune to any sanction, and they know it very well. When you tackle any of the people who complain about discipline in schools and ask them “Well? What would YOU do if you were a teacher?”, their response is usually “I just wouldn't put up with it!”
Fine. If anyone who thinks they could go into the classroom and “just not put up with it” would like to contact me, I may still have enough friends in local schools to arrange for them to put their theory into practice. Most of them wouldn't last a morning without either crying or throttling some little sod. Personally I recommend throttling.
I should in fairness say that Woodhead's suggestion that Head Teachers need to get out of their offices more, is not totally silly. The two best head teachers I ever worked for had one thing in common: they were both to be seen stalking the corridors of the school at all hours of the day, so that very little escaped their notice. Both their schools ran like clockwork, and were happy places because of it.
The GOS' own contribution to the long-running debate about what to do with our troubled schools is this: no one ever mentions that surely the most effective remedy would be to employ thousands more teachers, and outnumber the little bastards. This could at one fell swoop sort out the schools and also provide meaningful employment for asylum seekers, Ukrainian immigrants, veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, criminals on community service, Islamic jihadists and the long-term unemployed.
Or we could try cannibalism. It might be quite a strong deterrent to the little thugs in Year 11 if they knew they only had to step out of line once more to earn themselves a place on the menu in the school canteen. Or would that count as junk food? They'd have to be slaughtered halal, of course. I mean, we can't afford to be insensitive.
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