Standards of behaviour

Anastasia De Waal, 3 August 2007

Cameron gave a much publicised – as well as much satirised by the newspapers’ cartoonists – speech on Tuesday. School discipline was the theme in, as the Times Education Supplement puts it, ‘a speech designed to appeal to traditional Tory values’. Appealing to Conservative values was something more than one commentator considered rather urgent, with many a quip about Cameron’s inability to discipline his own party printed the following day. But looking at the content of the Tory leader’s speech, it would seem that concern rather than ridicule was in order.

The striking thing about Cameron’s proposals was his spectacular evasion – or was it, worst still, unawareness? – of the issues currently beleaguering the education system. That the Tory leader is worrying about discipline in schools is quite right; that he thinks head teachers and schools need far more disciplining powers, is also absolutely right; that we need to give children’s home-lives far more attention is also a tragically overlooked fact. What Cameron doesn’t seem to be aware of, however, are any of the causes of bad behaviour which currently ‘breed’ in school. The government, argues Cameron, needs to admit that it is ‘doing a bad job’ with ‘tough kids’. What he isn’t asking the government to admit is that it is doing a bad job with schools. Weak and overloaded curricula, a set of education policies more interested in spurious government accountability than pupils’ learning and oversized classes are not only exacerbating poor behaviour they are generating it.
So yes, pupils do need to ‘respect, and even fear’ their teachers if behaviour is to improve, but raising standards of behaviour also entails raising educational standards.
By Anastasia de Waal