A good discipline for schools

Ed Balls may have been on the ropes this morning about his ex-colleague Damien McBride's antics in no 10. But he has a good report from Sir Alan Steer to highlight today at the NASUWT conference on school discipline and behaviour. Having consistent approaches to discipline, with clear sanctions and rewards, has brought real improvements to many schools, and can do so for the quarter or so deemed to be not good enough at the moment. So can the use of 'withdrawal rooms.'

Applying this approach - and using existing powers - is likely to be far more effective than any new legislation - as Sir Alan says, they have the powers already; at no 10, I pressed for a right to discipline which became part of the 2006 legislation - and it has the benefit of being good common sense. (The Tory idea that all heads need is a 'right to exclude without appeal' is fanciful, given that only 100 out of 8680 permanently excluded troublemakers are actually readmitted after exclusion [table 11] and this is one area where the government is right to hold the opposition to account).

I have one niggling doubt about the schools secretary's prescriptions, however: he wants local authorities to send expert teams into schools that don't come up to scratch. It would be far more effective to facilitate groups of heads working together to achieve solutions: heads learning from fellow heads are more likely to heed their advice.

A bold move to boost discipline

At a time when the media is trying to pretend that the government has run out of ideas (though seems a loss to explain what the Tories offer instead), it is perhaps unsurprising that so little attention has been given to a ground-breaking proposal from the Department for Children, Schools and Families.

In an overdue overhaul of the pupil referral units for excluded pupils, replacing the poorest PRUs with alternatives delivered by private (including for profit) providers and charitable bodies, there should be much better provision for those at risk of exclusion, getting disruptive pupils out of the classroom quickly and offering many a better chance of gaining qualifications that many PRUs offer (although some PRUs are very good, despite the bad press they all have).

While more should be done to give headteachers powers to purchase places in the new units, this is both a more radical and a more practical proposal on the subject than the Tories' alternative which rests on the mad idea that if you scrap appeal panels, discipline will be transformed overnight. It deserves a lot more attention than it has had.

Suspended reality

David Cameron is today detailing the Tories' plans to free schools of troublemakers. Yet the top line of this fantasy-policy is once again the abolition of exclusion appeals panels. As has been said on this blog before, this will make virtually no difference to school discipline, but could greatly increase the amount of time heads will have to spend in the courts. This is why the Tory schools minister Robin Squire invented the appeals panels in the first place; since then, successive Labour ministers have tightened the rules and membership so that, of over 9000 exclusions, just 130 are reinstated on appeal each year. Even heads are not infallible, and there will probably be at least as many cases overturned in costly court cases.

The Tories also want to stop good schools 'having' to take excluded pupils; in fact, the best schools are often very good at dealing with excluded pupils in small numbers, and they should play their part with other heads in deciding what happens to excluded pupils, whether to use pupil referral units or other placements. And for that to work, the money must follow the pupil: to suggest otherwise, as the Tories do by saying schools would not be 'penalised' is confused (the only 'penalty' imposed has been to ensure that money does indeed follow the pupil, so a school would forfeit some money for a pupil no longer on its books).

Discipline is usually worst in the poor performing schools; one reason it is so is that they are expected to take a disproportionate number of excluded pupils. PRUs have improved since 1997, and there are far more places in them; but the government should also look at more permanent special school placements for those with the most severe beahavioural problems, for whom no mainstream schools may be appropriate. But today's recycled and ill-thought through policies from the Conservatives are a pretty poor substitute for a coherent school discipline policy, and show no sign of having moved on from Michael Howard's brilliant strategy on the subject at the last election.

Dave needs some discipline

If you want to know why most voters regard David Cameron as policy-light, just have a look at this tosh. Cameron repeats yet again the ludicrous notion that discipline problems in schools could all be solved if only we abolished the appeals panels which lead to just over 100 kids a year out of 9000+ excluded pupils being reinstated. Heads' leaders know that far more cases would go the parents' way in the courts than end up back in school after appeals now. Of course, schools should use good voluntary units more but local authority pupil referral units are a darn sight better now than they were when the Tories left office. And banning exclusion appeals is not the answer.