In defence of strict teachers

Labour have become alarmed by the strict, ‘cruel’ approach to discipline in schools and the rise in the number of pupils being excluded. Teachers will need to be more relaxed about ‘bad behaviour’. But though moving the goalposts of acceptable behaviour may reduce the exclusion figures, it is bound to increase the burden of disruptive behaviour on teachers and other pupils.

My own experience of teaching tells me that the new guidelines will increase bullying and reduce special needs inclusion, undermine the most disadvantaged families and ultimately increase educational inequality. So why are they doing it?

The simplest explanation is just the return to dominance, in the post-Conservative era, of the ‘priest class’ of the progressive teaching establishment and their enthusiasm for ‘student-led’ classrooms. Tom Bennett, the education department’s current behaviour czar, has a low-tolerance, high-expectation approach. But he’s due to leave next year, and may be ousted sooner.

School should be the great leveller, a safety-net of authority with the same high expectations for every pupil, no matter what sort of background they have. Fortunate kids have parents who encourage them to behave and to succeed. Other kids have parents who don’t, which is why schools that do have high standards disproportionately help those who have been undermined by their backgrounds. The irony is that it’s most often the liberal, middle-class parents at the more privileged and stable end of the spectrum who complain about discipline in schools. They rail against ordered schools as if they were sadistic Victorian workhouses.