Twenty Points and You Are Out Of School
If you’re an unruly child, isn’t the chance of being sent home exactly what you want? To be excluded must seem ideal but the impact to the school is enormous. The bureaucracy needed to control the unruly is a huge drain on the school. The temptation to mitigate the punishment must loom large if only to reduce the effect on the school targets.
Officials claim most teachers are unaware of their full rights to deal with the unruly, thereby loosing the opportunity to nip things in the bud. Similarly justice being seen to be done is a key deterrent and often obscured by the antics of school versus pupil.
I recall my own children suffering the effects of unruly behaviour in class. As a consequence Science was a subject virtually abandoned at their school in GCSE and A level.
In my view the influence and control of a child by the parents is paramount in the formula. Pointless being corrected at school if the issue is not reinforced at home. One individual can induce huge disruption affecting the entire class. Maybe the fine should reflect this effect, become significantly increased over the £50 proposal. It should be also linked to a points system. Once a maximum score is reached the child is expelled.
Alistair Owens http://www.keen2learn.co.uk
