Isn’t school discipline for parents, too?
Nigel Williams, 25 April 2013
Official statistics suggest that the numbers of school absences is declining. At face value, this is good news. A report ‘Always Someone Else’s Problem‘ from the government’s Children’s Commissioner suggests that some schools are excluding pupils covertly. Any such practice obviously distorts the statistics.
The quantitative evidence comes from the NFER Teacher Voice panel, 1000 teachers and headteachers selected to be nationally representative. We must trust this. If the teachers selected themselves for the panel, it could seriously over-represent the proportion.
The detailed methodological annexes are not yet on the OCC website. The panel were asked : ‘Has your school ever done any of the following?’, listing possible legal and illegal actions. Note ‘ever‘. Note also ‘your school‘, not ‘you‘. ‘Ever‘ means immediately that a larger number will answer positively than if they were asked about a particular recent period. Teachers that have witnessed the practice in their decades of experience would answer positively even if no incident happened in the last year. ‘Your school‘ means that large schools will report a greater share of their incidents, since every teacher can report every incident. If the numbers of exclusions and teachers were in proportion to each other, then the teachers in the survey would need their answers weighted inversely by the size of the school. This sort of adjustment is crucial before reporting figures. it is certainly overstating the accuracy to use decimal places when reporting percentages from a sample of only 1000.
It is a fair conclusion that the levels reported are higher than the current prevalence. Nevertheless, the issue is of supreme importance. School absences are an early warning indicator of criminal activity in years to come. Disruption in class also impairs the education of that whole class. Indeed it is an obstacle to social mobility if children from poorer backgrounds are required to share classrooms with disruptive pupils because their schools lack the powers to exclude given to schools in the private sector. However small the prevalence it is still worth pursuing.
Pupils’ bad behaviour at school is often, with some justification, attributed to problems elsewhere in the children’s circumstances. Some of the same understanding could be offered to teachers and schools. If the choice is between keeping a difficult child in the class and acting illegally, then it is a sign that schools need more and better options. If statemented children are being sent home because an assistant or carer is off sick, it suggests that there are too few resources to provide cover. There needs to be enough for peak demand, not just for the average. If disruptive children really are being hidden from Ofsted inspectors, it is slightly worrying that the inspectors do not already notice but distinctly worrying how the inspectors’ report has become such an overriding priority. More worrying still is that the Commissioner has recommendations for everyone save the parents. When parents are supportive of school discipline, exclusion, overt or covert, seldom needs even to be considered.