Scenes From The Battleground

I discussed previously the rise of comprehensive schooling and the deteriorating position of the teaching profession. I didn’t explain the phenomena that followed on from this. The Battleground School is the type of school I have been writing about.

To be precise I am using the term to refer to schools of the following type:

• They are large, usually secular, mixed (or boys’) comprehensives.
• They have a limited or ineffective discipline system, in particular, referrals of serious incidents regularly result in no action against the student responsible and such incidents are common.
• School management explicitly avoid endorsing punishment as part of the school discipline system.
• The ethos of the school prioritises socialisation, but not socialisation into academic, religious or (conventional) moral values.
• Management deny the existence of the behaviour problems identified by staff, and see behaviour as primarily the responsibility of the teaching staff.

No figures exist for what proportion of schools are like this. My personal experience suggests that it has become the norm. I have direct experience of schools of this sort being praised by OFSTED as if nothing was awry. They form the overwhelming majority of schools in the Local Authorities where I have worked and I know from the reaction to this blog that a large number of teachers in other parts of this country are in such schools. The question I am interested in is not “how common are such schools?” I know that I am unlikely to get a more precise answer than “very common”. What intrigues me is how long such schools have been a feature of our education system.

The first point is that they have existed since at least the early sixties, before comprehensives had even became widespread. The first reference I can find to such a school is that of Risinghill which was established in 1960. Berg (1968) writes a glowing review of a school serving the deprived based on principles she finds agreeable. The headmaster, Michael Duane:

• announced to the children there would be no more corporal punishment
• claimed “I personally have no time for punishment at all”
• concluded the discipline problems were the fault of “second-raters” on the teaching staff who “did not know how to deal with children who are uninhibited and therefore a threat to the authoritarian standard”
• refused to expel any child
• did not support staff with disciplining the students

To him good teachers were the ones who “treat people [children] with respect, as friends”. “Humanist assemblies” and “child centred lessons” were introduced. Sex education became X-rated in its language and explicitness. A School Council was introduced.

In prize day speeches Duane declared:

“To measure a school by exam results is like estimating the quality of a man’s life by the number of calories he burns … They bear no relation to the real purposes of living… vigour.. spontaneity.. and a zest for life. These are important.”

and

“You cannot educate against the climate of opinion or attitude in the family, or neighbourhood or society.”

Despite the writer’s spin (apparently traditionalist teachers and unprincipled politicians are to be blamed for everything that went wrong at the school) it soon becomes clear that violent gangs formed among the pupils. Staff wouldn’t stay at the school and were often off sick. Inspectors found obscene graffiti, internal truancy, and unruly and uninterested children. Staff complained of having been attacked (including with a gun) and were often sworn at. One teacher, of the most liberal variety, describes a boy pulling a knife on her and a girl in a class being molested by a boy, with no punishment given (apparently this approach shows you are “a special kind of teacher”).

It is hard to read Berg’s account without concluding that she is describing the archetype for modern British schooling. However, this was not when such schools became normal. Risinghill became a national scandal and was closed down. Other comprehensives did not follow suit. Some schools that became comprehensives made a virtue of retaining a grammar school ethos, such as Highbury Grove Boy’s School. But over time things changed. Francis Gilbert’s two books (Gilbert 2004 and 2005) describe Battleground Schools in the early 1990s which, although not named, are easily identifiable. McNulty (2005) describes something similar, again dating back to the early nineties.

The creation of OFSTED led to the identification of failing schools, some, such as Hackney Downs and The Ridings became infamous. Others became infamous for other reasons, such as St Geroge’s in Westminster where the headmaster Philip Lawrence was murdered at the school gates before entering Special measures (I include St George’s despite it being a Catholic school as Stubbs (2003) suggests that at its low point it lost any Catholic ethos). These schools are, however, the extreme cases and can no more be considered to be representative of a wider class of schools than Risinghill was. What’s more indicative is Blum (1998) and Johnson (1999).

Paul Blum’s book is an excellent survival guide for teachers in Battleground Schools, or in his phrase “difficult classrooms”. In his introduction he describes the problems faced by teachers:

“There will often be situations in which they will be faced with defiance, aggression and verbal abuse… [and] low-level energy-sapping daily routines in which they struggle to get the pupils to stop talking and actually listening to what they are saying.”

The success of this book (I recently saw large numbers of copies in the library of a university well know for its teacher training, far more than any other behaviour book) suggests his advice is widely applicable and that challenging classrooms are very common indeed, but he nevertheless writes as if the “rough schools” he’s describing are only those schools “which [are] bottom or near the bottom of the examination league table in [their] local area”.

Martin Johnson’s book has a similar viewpoint, despite being written as a polemic rather than as advice. He describes perfectly life in a Battleground School, including the anarchy in the corridors and the hostility faced in the classrooms. Like Blum he condemns those who suggest that “good teaching” is a panacea to classroom chaos and claims that he is talking about a minority of schools. He identifies these as “schools for the underclass” and assumes they exist only as a result of deprivation.

So as I’ve said the battleground schools have existed for, five decades. However, for most of that time they seemed exceptional. By the nineties they were easily found and by the late nineties and this decade they were common enough for people to write books about them as if they were an unavoidable widespread feature of UK education system. All the tough schools I’ve worked in have had a history, passed on by the old hands, that explains when they become tough. The nineties and the turn of the twenty-first century figure prominently in those stories.

As I said, I am convinced that they have become the norm, that they are actually the bog standard, at least in England. A short scan of the British education blogosphere and teacher forums seems to confirm this impression. Many of the books I mentioned carefully tried to explain the exceptional nature of the experiences described, and carefully and sympathetically explained the plight of the urban poor. By 2006 no such niceties were necessary, teachers were willingly buying a book, with a cover that stated:

“The kids are thick, the parents are scum, there’s drugs everywhere and half the girls are giving birth.”

Chalk (2006)

The Battleground school has now taken over.

References

Berg, Leila, Risinghill:Death of a Comprehensive School, 1968, Penguin Books

Chalk, Frank, It’s Your Time You’re Wasting, 2006, Monday Books.

Gilbert, Francis, I’m a Teacher Get Me Out Of Here, 2004, Short Books

Gilbert, Francis, Teacher On The Run, 2005, Short books.

Johnson, Martin, Failing Schools, Failing City 1999, Jon Carpenter

McNulty, Phil, Extreme Headship, 2005, Trafford

Stubbs, Marie A Head of The Class, 2003, John Murray

Before you read this have a look at The Driving Lesson dialogue which featured in my blog in November 2007. It was well received at the time and I revisit it now because it, and the reaction to it, illustrates some of the recurring themes of this blog.

Firstly (as you may have noticed), I have often explained that the behaviour of learners in our schools is terrible. Arguing over where to sit, blaming the teacher for poor achievement, refusing to listen and all the time arguing with the teacher is not just commonplace, but actually routine in many classrooms. I have seen it in the schools I have worked in and many teachers who read the story of the Driving Lesson responded to say they recognised it too. In fact the behaviour is worse than terrible it is absurd. It doesn’t consist simply of silly, childish behaviour or, to borrow a phrase, “low-level disruption”. It has reached the point of a ritual conducted out of habit no matter how inappropriately. For this behaviour to exist widely it is not enough for us to assume that children are simply awkward at times, or that teachers haven’t persuaded them to appreciate the benefits of an education. We have to accept that the education system has initiated them into bizarre patterns of behaviour. Arguing for five minutes over where you are going to sit is as pointless in a classroom as in a car. A couple of the teachers who contacted me about The Driving Lesson asked permission to use it as a role-play with their students in the hope that it may bring home to them the ridiculous nature of their behaviour.

Secondly, a major consideration in that behaviour is the belief on the part of students that teachers are to be held responsible for the students’ behaviour and effort. This is not at the basic level of expecting teachers to enforce the rules and spell out what is required for students. It has reached the point where a student can choose to break the rules, or choose not to work, and then tell any teacher who confronts this behaviour that they are at fault. This spills out from accusations into verbal abuse and even violence.

Finally, although large numbers of teachers can recognise the behaviour described there is another possible reaction to the story of the Driving Lesson; denial. When the original website that my blog was hosted on ceased to exist I looked into moving it to one of the top education sites in the UK. I was told

I’d be interested in publishing your blog, but it would need to be firmly focused upon education, so although I really enjoyed the driving school piece, it isn’t really suitable for [us].

Unbelievably, there are people in the wider field of education who are simply oblivious to how children are behaving in our schools. The web journalist quoted above is merely the tip of the iceberg. A far more important denial of the realities of behaviour in secondary schools is the following:

… most schools successfully manage behaviour to create an environment in which learners feel valued, cared for and safe … in our experience, where unsatisfactory behaviour does occur, in the vast majority of cases it involves low level disruption in lessons. Incidents of serious misbehaviour, and especially acts of extreme violence, remain exceptionally rare and are carried out by a very small proportion of pupils.

Steer (2005)

This quotation is from the Introduction to the Steer Report a review of behaviour in schools commissioned after school discipline became an issue during the 2005 general election campaign. It was put together by a team of headteachers, school managers, an OFSTED official with responsibility for behaviour, and various union representatives. Somehow the behaviour that is so commonplace that I could satirise it in my blog, because I could be sure teachers would recognise it, exists in a world that the leading lights of the educational establishment are unaware of.

I tend to see denial as emanating from the education establishment and the associated education bureaucracies, rather than the politicians. But what I want to see as soon as possible is a politician willing to face up to the truth on education, and say about the education system what John Reid (whatever happened to him?) said about the Home Office, that it’s “not fit for purpose”.

References:

Alan Steer (chair), Learning Behaviour: The Report of The Practitioners’ Group on School Behaviour and Discipline, DFES

This is another one for the “if you have never taught in a bad school you might think this is trivial” file. The problem I’m about to go over probably happens in all schools, what makes it significant is entirely the scale of it in my day-to-day teaching life.

The problem is this: Kids throw things at each other.

Now this is a problem because it is constant, not because every child does it but because a significant number of students do it, and a small minority do it continually. You can punish when you see it, but for some students if they have something to throw they will wait until the teacher looks away and then throw at every opportunity. (I mean that literally, so potentially every two minutes for an entire day). Looking at it from the point of view of another student, just imagine what it is like to be in a classroom where at any moment you can have something thrown at you.

Some teachers set a detention whenever they see it happen. In a bad school the worst offenders are in the detention immune category and will not be deterred. You have little choice but to accept the inclination to throw as an inevitable fact of life, or teach in a way where you never look at a book or an individual but constantly survey the whole class.

So what do we do about the problem?

Well, it comes down to controlling the ammunition. Students collect a variety of things to throw:

1. Plant-life. This is among the worse, berries, twigs and general detritus. Students are too lazy to bend down so they won’t usually collect stones, except to throw immediately, but they will strip hedges and trees of potential projectiles. All you can do is watch out for students stood next to hedges and trees and force them to drop their ammunition before they get to the classroom.
2. Stationery and equipment. Fortunately in a tough school no student ever brings in their own stationary so teachers can control this one. Teachers must be careful never to lend out certain items except under close supervision. Staplers can be stripped of staples, glue-sticks can have their glue picked out, erasers can be thrown as a whole or broken to pieces first. Pencils with erasers on the end should be avoided, as should pens with lids or smaller parts. Activities that involve using small objects are avoided (so very few experiments in science are allowed, and no dice or coin-throwing in maths). Rulers, protractors, compasses and calculators must be as robust as possible. Colouring pencils and pens are never lent out (all shading is to be done in pencil).
3. Paper. This is a very common one as it is in no short supply in schools. There has to be a very firm set of rules regarding it. Punishments must be given for tearing paper out of books or for passing notes. Worksheets must be kept to a minimum and always have names written on them as soon as they are handed out. Paper is often very unsatisfactory as ammunition, you need quite a lot of it to create a paper ball big enough to be noticed. The usual tactic to compensate for this is to chew it and fire it through a pen that has been adapted for the purpose. (The removed parts of the pen can then be used for throwing too).
4. Food and sweets. In classrooms food and sweets have to be banned. Outside, it must be tightly regulated. It is entirely unremarkable to see students buy a cake from the school canteen and go into the playground and without taking one bite break off pieces and throw them until there is no cake left. Problems with gulls and rats are quite common in school playgrounds.
5. Classroom Items. Teachers have to make their classrooms as bare as possible. No spare sheets of paper left out, no interesting tactile objects, no equipment left out in a tray. Drawing pins cannot be used for display work and blu-tack can only be used on posters high up on the walls. No classroom feature, such as blinds or heaters can have breakable parts.

All this seems like it might be overkill. I wish it was. The simple fact is there are kids in schools for whom this behaviour is habit. You know you have established your authority in the school when you can turn your back on kids without being hit with a missile.

Until you are truly feared then, student or staff, you can expect to be a target. If you’re lucky it will be a ball of paper or a berry. If you are unlucky it will be a calculator or a rock.