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SCOTLAND
'Theft of education' must be stopped
Late on Friday the Scottish Executive published, with
a degree of discretion amounting to secrecy, its latest research into
disciplinary problems in schools. Believing it deserves a wider audience
than the Executive apparently intended, we are bringing it to the
public’s attention. We also reveal today a shocking incident which took
place last week, when an eight-year-old boy at a Glasgow primary school
assaulted his headmistress so severely she required hospitalisation. The
scale and character of indiscipline in Scottish schools today is
alarming. It is a matter of concern not only for parents, teachers and
the Executive, but for everyone who values the civil society that
generations of Scots created through their unsparing efforts. The stakes
could not be higher: the education, skills and life opportunities of our
young people are under threat. The report, entitled Teachers’
Perceptions of Discipline in Scottish Schools, draws upon the direct
experience of those in the front line. By making comparisons with
similar research in primary schools in 1996 and in secondary schools in
1990 and 1996, it charts a worrying deterioration of discipline over the
past decade or so.
In primary schools, 62% of teachers now report
unpunctuality occurring at least once a week, compared with 56% in 1996.
Verbal abuse of staff has risen from 8% to 12% and impertinent remarks
are reported by 52% of teachers, compared with 44% in 1996. Although
primary teachers’ experience of physical aggression has risen only from
1% to 2%, the figure is now 12% for head teachers, who have a wider
disciplinary overview. This puts the recent outrage in Glasgow into
perspective. It is at secondary level that the collapse of classroom
order is more dramatically illustrated. Hindering other pupils, reported
by 90% of teachers in 1990, is up to 95%. Similarly, impertinent remarks
have rocketed from 71% to 87%; and physical destructiveness from 18% to
39%. Verbal abuse of teachers increased from 21% in 1990 to 45% today.
Most seriously of all, physical aggression against teachers rose from 2%
to 8%, with 17% of headteachers recording experience of it at least once
a week. That is not a learning environment. Although the greatest cause
for concern is violence directed against staff and other pupils, the
lesser infringements represent a relentless erosion of classroom
stability and an attrition of concentration. As one harassed teacher
told the researchers, disruptive pupils “steal the other children’s
education”. Of course there are many well-behaved classes, efficiently
disciplined by dedicated teachers. The research cited above, however,
does not invite confidence in the assertion by Councillor Ewan Aitken,
education spokesman for COSLA, that “there are no failing schools in
Scotland”. The causes of this malaise are multiple. Today’s teachers
have inherited the legacy of a past generation that supported, through
the teaching unions, the progressive methods enjoined by educationalists
and their supporters within the political establishment in the 1960s and
1970s. At the same time, society has undergone seismic changes,
undermining the traditional family structure that formerly complemented
the school system. Alongside social abuses such as the drug problem, the
end of an automatic acceptance of hierarchy has subverted the status of
teachers. The researchers noted the emergence of a culture of rights
divorced from responsibilities as underlying indiscipline in schools.
This inverts the philosophy of education: the imparting of knowledge by
the informed to the uninformed.
What is the solution? As a last resort, exclusion from
school may be necessary. As a lesser sanction, specialist units, both
inside and outside schools, may also be effective. Again, there will be
problems of "resources" and likely reluctance by headteachers to
advertise failure by having a packed sin bin. The priority, however,
must be to facilitate learning by the majority of non-disruptive pupils.
29 November 2004
http://news.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=1368182004
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