TASK FORCE AIMS TO ENFORCE SCHOOL DISCIPLINE

[yannie]

Task force aims to enforce school discipline
LONDON (Reuters) - Task forces of expert teachers are to be set-up to tackle the problem of unruly behaviour in classrooms, the government said on Friday.

Schools Minister said the new group will advise the government on how to improve discipline and how to get parents to accept responsibility for their children's behaviour.

"A culture of respect, good behaviour and firm discipline must be the norm in all schools all of the time," she added.

Prime Minister Tony Blair has made a crackdown on anti-social behaviour a key theme of his third term in office

 

[frenchperson]

Hey BLAIR - Leave them kids alone

 

[armourer]

Classrooms need to go back to rows of single desks, with teachers able to hurl a blackboard duster with accuracy at a miscreant without fear of retribution.

Random thrashing of pupils with the cane, ruler or belt.

Compulsory PT 3 times a week morons...sorry mean pupils to wear shorts, blue, stupid & vest, white, baggy.

 

[canteen_cowboy]

Classrooms need to go back to rows of single desks, with teachers able to hurl a blackboard duster with accuracy at a miscreant without fear of retribution.

Random thrashing of pupils with the cane, ruler or belt.

Compulsory PT 3 times a week morons...sorry mean pupils to wear shorts, blue, stupid & vest, white, baggy.

Also some teachers need to respect pupils as well, they say they want to clamp down on unruly behaviour, i am all for that and agree with armourer on the theory of going back to cpl punishment.
but at the present time i think the teachers are not accepting responsibility(generalism) and just like most of the public sector they use the excuse on getting nu labour's results so they can get money, and pupils are secondary to that task.
any misbehaving and the kids seem to be suspended or excluded so they do not have to deal with them. make it someone else's problem
just my POV.

 

[stoatman]

But currently the teachers have almost no sanctions that they can bring against unruly pupils, and the pupils know it. What sanctions they can bring are often delayed-effect (like detention), and the parents now stick up for their kids rather than the school.

 

[maninblack]

I will respect teachers as professionals when they start to dress and act like professional instead of leather elbow patched trotskyists with an inferiority complex and an over active immaturity gland.

Daughterinblack, along with 4 of her friends, recently had to stand in front of the class for a humiliating inquisition because of a serious misdemeanor in the classroom......somebody had left a carrier bag on a table and nobody would admit it was theirs. There was a receipt from WH Smiths in it and the teacher was trying to get the kids to ask their parents if they purchased the listed magazines so that she could determine who the criminal bag scatterer was.


Does this teacher really expect parents to take her seriously when she gets premenstrual over a carrier bag?

MiB...sitting firmly on the fence and wishing he got 24 grand a year for a part time job ("oooo it's so stressful"....try holding someone's intestines in with your hands like the paramedics do and then tell me it is stressful)

 

[stoatman]

MiB - it's not a part-time job - good teachers work easily 12 hour days during termtime & much of the holidays is spent on preparation.

My father is a teacher in an independent school, and he was working 18 hour days during termtime as a housemaster. Now he's back down to 12-14. During the holidays he's still working on average 4 hours a day, although he tends to blitz this in long days soon after the end of term and before the start of the next one.

During termtime, he starts work at 8:30, has a 25 minute break mid-morning (which is often taken over with a meeting), an hour for lunch, and then is coaching sport and teaching until between 4&6pm. He then has dinner & does marking & preparation until at least 9pm normally, and sometimes has duties until 11pm.

 

[DozyBint]

Woolly-minded-liberal-none-too-dozy-sis did 5 years in an inner-London Infant / Junior school. She taught children from age 5 to 10. Whilst she was teaching the 5-year-olds she had to sit in on an interview with a boy (the child's mother was there too, but she asked sis to sit-in as she said she'd not be able to understand ) when the police questioned him about a mugging that had taken place - allegedly approximately 15 5-14 year olds were in this gang. When she taught the 9-10-year-olds she had a chair thrown at her. Sis worked very hard (though I too ribbed her about the amount of holiday) did many hours of lesson prep & marking and got top marks in the 2 OFSTEDs she had in this 5 year period.

She now works for the same borough, but for the education department (professional standards team) and bemoans the number of useless and lazy teachers she has to deal with, though says that there are some real gems out there. Like in all walks of life, I guess there will always be the good, the bad & those who should be shot.

 

[blurp]

I think its a tad unfair to slag off teachers as trotskyites etc etc . Similarly, to say that they pursue league tables to their pupils expence. As in all walks of life, some are tossers (but few). The stress element is also relative. I've been doing it for about ten years now and I find it bloody stressful for want of a better word. Whilst i now teach prisoners ( which one could expect to be a bit hard), i have taught in real schools and I have the same strees now as I did then . No different. Have also done the pushing in intestines bit and the clearing up shit bit Its just different. In fairness, you also have to remember that a lot of teachers come from backgrounds where they have not been exposed to bad things. The upshot of this is that bad things affect them a lot more than they do people who do not have a rose tinted view of the world.

The reasons it has gone to pot are:

No and i repeat No effective sanctions, even expulsion is nigh on impossible.

A culture where discipline is a dirty word and respect is given to tossers like posh and becks rather than real people who deserve it.

An academically led curriculum which is both repetitive and dumbed down. In consequence, it does not challenge the best and bores the arse off the less able. There are precious few places nowadays where vocational qualifications such as motor vehicle engineering and painting/decorating are taught effectively because they seldom give enough points to the school for the league tables

An educational culture which has kicked out several hundred years of knowledge on the best ways to teach a child and opted to create individuals who can express and opinion about most things. Unfortunately, they do not have the knowledge to back it up.

Actually, I did not need to write this. Ishould have just pasted armourers words about desks in rows etc. That will work as it implies and accepts a system of authority. Then again, these no hopers in government will probably come out with a scheme to buy all the bad uns an X box just so long as they don't kick the teachers head in.

 

[Whiskybreath]

Could someone - perhaps one of those fact-finding expeditions MPs will be banding together to go on during their 80-day absence from duty - go to Singapore, bottle the quality which gives the local school and university students their vim, come back and wet the country's schools with the contents?

 

[frenchperson]

We should go back to Corporal punishment....

...what I mean is punishment for the ******** Corporals who post their narrow minded rubbish about hitting young people with canes, etc.

 

[Myss]

Schools Minister said the new group will advise the government on how to improve discipline and how to get parents to accept responsibility for their children's behaviour.

Prime Minister Tony Blair has made a crackdown on anti-social behaviour a key theme of his third term in office

I wander what punishment or advice would be given for parents of/ young 'agers being completely out on-the-p1ss in Leicester Square? Perhaps the PM could ask to Ewan Blair for his hands-on advice

 

[DozyBint]

Could someone - perhaps one of those fact-finding expeditions MPs will be banding together to go on during their 80-day absence from duty - go to Singapore, bottle the quality which gives the local school and university students their vim, come back and wet the country's schools with the contents?

I have to disagree with that. Fair enough, the grads we employ out here are polite & well educated, but few have an ability to think "outside the box" & very few have sparky attitudes. I would take (an equivalent course & qualification) Brit educated graduate over a Singaporean educated one any day.

 

[blurp]

The last I remember about Singapore was a system of junior colleges using British written exams ( read to avoid corruption issues and so that no local person takes flak if the paper goes pear shaped... loss of face )
Some schools such as raffles running a three or maybe two shift teaching pattern and a compulsory AO level to enter University involving English comprehension. English often being a second language and for some, a third. So i got the impression that they work hard at it and I don't think much has changed.

The fact that education issues regularly make front page news more or less says it all. You also have a system there where the police can thrash you with a stick for misdemeanours and at least the males go on to 2 years National service. You have a culture of respect as smiler Bliar says.

I also agree with the previous poster in that these polite young people often lack initiative or originality of thought. Their system or race or whatever you want to call it tends to stifle the individuality of people. I think we need to pick up the good bits from them and leave out certain bits. Incidentally, the good bits were taught to them by us. They decided to keep the baby but also kept much of the bath water.

And french person, are you real Corporal punishment does actually work. Whatever the why's or whatever as to why we no longer have it in the UK, its discussion on a forum such as this is merited. You can't merely dismiss it with the sort of pat statement that I would expect from a sixth former with an angst complex. I look forward to a good slagging off. Oh yes

 

[76mill]

We should go back to Corporal punishment....

...what I mean is punishment for the ******** Corporals who post their narrow minded rubbish about hitting young people with canes, etc.

You need a good caning with a track link round the back of the hangars you c*cksucker

 

[Whiskybreath]

... the grads we employ out here are polite & well educated, but few have an ability to think "outside the box" & very few have sparky attitudes. I would take (an equivalent course & qualification) Brit educated graduate over a Singaporean educated one any day.

Seen, but do they need to think outside their boxes? I was in Singapore a few times for brief (and hazy) periods a couple of years ago and you're right, recent graduates I met were polite and excellent communicators, and very proud of their culture. And I believe they represent a significant percentage of their peergroups, in stark contrast to the numbers of their UK oppos. In technical areas, too, not diversity studies. I was highly impressed, but maybe it was the Guinness.

 

[teehee]

quote=Whiskybreath
Seen, but do they need to think outside their boxes? I was in Singapore a few times for brief (and hazy) periods a couple of years ago and you're right, recent graduates I met were polite and excellent communicators, and very proud of their culture. And I believe they represent a significant percentage of their peergroups, in stark contrast to the numbers of their UK oppos. In technical areas, too, not diversity studies. I was highly impressed, but maybe it was the Guinness.[/quote]
to be fair english kids have no tradition to be proud of really...i mean there arent really any old customs that we could be proud of.no national dress or stuff like that...maybe if we had something that everyone could be proud of things would be different and teachers wldnt have such a hrd time as kids would actually want not to be cks!!