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Outside in the corridor, I can hear Wesley, a Year 11 pupil, arguing with Mr Jones bout his coursework. He has missed the deadline for handing it in and, for no obvious reason that I can discern, was given another week to complete it. Needless to say, he has still not finished the work and Mr Jones is telling him that tomorrow is absolutely his final chance.
There’s an indignant screech from Wesley.
“Well, OK, then,” says Mr Jones. “Wednesday, since you've got football after school today.”
This charade simply reinforces the idea that they can ignore all deadlines while we bend over backwards to accommodate them. As preparation for the world of work it is absurd.
This sort of thing is so typical, completely an everyday thing. I am currently working with some students who have not yet finished coursework started a year ago. It should have taken two weeks. Max.
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In common with many schools, we have a policy of “Inclusion”. This essentially means that not only will we take anyone, regardless of their impact on the rest of the kids, but also that we send a clear message to our persistent offenders: “Do that again, and you won’t be thrown out!”
Well that certainly teaches them a lesson.
As most children on the planet would give their right arm for the lifestyle and privileges our kids turn their noses up at, I refuse to fall into the apologies’ camp.
So many of our students (I find it so difficult to use that word without giggling) must be perplexed when, in later life, they are sacked from work for persistent lateness, petty theft, disobeying instructions and so on. After all, for the previous twelve years at school, this behaviour has been perfectly acceptable.
When Heads and SMT finally get round to chucking some brat our, usually after years of persistently appalling behaviour, culminating in something beyond the pale – they've murdered someone, say, or are using the maths classroom as the base for a drugs-and-prostitution racket – they have to get the support of the school governors.
The governors are a shady bunch, whose job seems to be to hinder our best efforts to teach by preventing the exclusion of such children.
Even if they do back us up, the pupil’s parents can still appeal.
What a joke.
Let’s consider the case of one of our ex-pupils, Shane.
For those of you who have no idea of what goes on in schools nowadays (maybe you have a position on the SMT) the exclusion procedure goes something like this.
Shane joins in Y7 and is a pain in the neck from the word go. We expect this: we've heard that he was a nightmare at his Primary School. He is rude to teachers, disrupts lessons, gets endless reports, detentions and whatever. He does not turn up to most of his detentions, with the backing of his mother, who claims that the school picks on her Shane; she phones up endlessly and threatens school staff with violence or persecution, or both. (She is familiar with court; that is where she met Shane’s father.)
By Y10, Shane is a serious problem child. He causes constant, low-level disruption, though the term ‘low level disruption’ is misleading: we use it to describe swearing and shouting out in lessons, fighting, refusing to carry out simple instructions and arguing with teachers. All of those would once have been considered serious incidents and dealt with accordingly. Occasionally, Shane is involved in what we still call ‘serious incidents’ he might have threatened someone with a knife or been caught with drugs on the school premises. These result in a few one or two-day exclusions, but are more often simply brushed under the carpet by SMT [Senior Management Team].
By this stage in his school life, there is more effort, time and resources being spent on Shane than on 20 better-behaved students. The Behaviour Psychologist comes to see him once a week for a nice cosy chat; she refers to him as a ‘Casualty of the System.’ She doesn't seem to notice the real casualties: the other children in Shane’s class, who have lost literally hundreds of hours of their education by now.
Halfway through Y10, Shane assaults a teacher. The teacher demands his exclusion, but Shane claims that the teacher pushed him out of the door and two of his friends (both known liars) back up his claim. The Head wavers and askes the teacher if he did anything to provoke the incident. The teacher backs down. The Head calls in mum and arranges a ‘Package of Measures’. This is a teaching term which means ‘backs down completely’. Effectively, this means Shane must attend only those lessons that he feels he can cope with. How nice!
A month later, he assaults another teacher. This one is made of sterner stuff and, despite Shane tying a similar argument with the backing of the same two friends, the entire department refuses to have Shane in their lessons (a rare example of teachers sticking together, caused by fear that they will be next and that it might hurt). The Head is faced with the option of having him taught on his own, at huge expense, or permanently excluding Shane. He reluctantly takes the latter course.
You may think it’s all over for Shane at this point. NO, no, gentle reader.
The school Governors decide not to support the Head’s exclusion. They believe the little brat’s claim that the teacher provoked him. This is no ordinary teacher, however; as we have seen, he has persuaded each of Shane’s teacher to refuse to have him in their lessons. The Governors are eventually talked around and Shane is thrown out.
However, he now has the right to appeal to an independent panel and mum intends to exercise this right.
She has persuaded a GP to diagnose Shane as suffering from ADHD or ODD and is claiming that the school is discriminating against him because of his disability.
While this appeal is going through, the school must accommodate Shane on the premises and provide work for him to do. As none of the staff will teach him, he has to have his own Supply Teacher, which costs the school a couple of hundred pounds per day.
If he wins the appeal, we’re back to square one. If he loses, he just moves to another school and he’s no longer our problem.
I can vouch that this is in no way exaggerated. This is absolutely typical policy. I wonder why there are problems in schools? Maybe we should invent a few new buzzwords or spent millions on new IT? Yes that'll do the trick...