Educational Advice Slot: The Importance Of Codes Of Discipline In Schools

I am joined by some very good company.

It is, of course, the educational consultant

and former deputy principal of Rice College,

Mr. John Burns.

John, how are you?

I'm very well, Alan.

How are you doing?

I am good.

I'm good.

You look very well today.

Ah, you're still, your ability to lie is peckable as always.

Well, I was teaching for years.

You were exactly exactly.

You never lose it.

You never lose it.

And that is why you were here, not just to lie to me

about how I look, but to impart some of your educational knowledge

on people.

This week, you're going to chat about school

and discipline policies.

What put this in your mind as something

that we should touch on?

I thought it was something we would touch on at some stage

because it is a part of school that

kind of tips into parents' lives quite a bit.

And also, it's very much part of a student experience

within school.

But it was triggered, really, when I got a question last week

by email from a parent, and the question goes as follows.

John, my son has been suspended from school for four days,

and the reasons given in the letter from the school

cite ongoing disruption in class, as well as foul language

towards the teacher and classmates, along with no homework.

And could the school have dealt with this matter

without suspension, as it has upset the whole house?

No, I think encapsulated for me why you have a courted discipline.

And it encapsulates for me, sort of where we are nowadays.

I am never harking back to the good old days

because that's the different way of looking at things.

But you look at the actual story.

The suspension was for four days, which is quite big.

The reasons are ongoing disruption, so not just one class.

Now remember, if a student disrupts a class,

they've disrupted the teaching and learning

for 29 other students, or 23 other students,

if it's one of those specialized classes

like Woolberg or Home Economics.

Now, the reasons for the disruption

can be looked at later.

But disruption is disruption.

And the minute you have that disruption in class,

the teaching stops until the disruption is dealt with.

Now, if you have one student going from class to class,

constantly disrupting, you're going to affect

the learning capabilities and academic achievements

of their classmates.

Now, if the disruption has nothing to do

with a child's particular special needs,

let's take that out of it.

And let's just say this is disruption,

in a sense of all fashion disruption,

is that a student knows what they're doing.

They understand that this disruption

is going to cause problems, is going to bring attention

to themselves as being, you know, I'm the big I am,

I'm great cracking class.

But it's not funny after a while,

because it really does affect the teacher's ability.

If you're trying to teach a complex part of biology,

and you're trying to teach a complex mathematical,

you know, a theorem, and you have someone

in the middle of the class who's just derailing everything,

it isn't good enough.

It's not fair.

So that person's behavior has to be dealt with

for the sake of everybody else.

But so we have ongoing disruption in class.

I was kind of glad to see that because that would,

that would definitely justify a serious reaction

to school once off everyone does.

And that was what I wondered, you know,

as you said at the outset, when people here,

you touched on as well, four days seems quite severe.

But if this is ongoing, I mean, ongoing could be days

of this, weeks of this, longer, you know,

one instance of it as you've just outlined

is bad enough, but if it's ongoing

and it's affecting 29 other students

and a teacher on a regular basis,

you have to have a big response.

You have to, and I often sit to students

who are involved in ongoing disruption

that they've got the geography of the school mixed up.

This classroom is not the playground.

Yeah, yeah.

So you need to keep that stuff outside,

and you need to respect, first of all,

you need to respect your peers.

They need to learn.

Some of them are not as bright as you are.

Some of them are far brighter than you are,

and you have your place in the class,

but your place is not to disrupt everybody else.

If you continue to disrupt everybody else,

then the school has to in effect a sanction

to protect the teaching and learning.

That's the overall overarching view of the whole thing.

Okay, so look at discipline, a code of discipline.

Every school has one, I guess,

incidents like this is why they need one,

but can you just explain in more detail

what a code discipline actually is for us?

I can, but I just want to look at the question

for a second, and if you don't mind,

we looked at ongoing disruption.

Distute lots of foul language towards the teacher.

Now, you think of that, right?

I mean, I was speaking to Adrian Hardy

when I was outside who was community policing.

I mean, respect for police in our country,

respect for figures of authority is dropping,

and if we don't maintain it within the school system,

it's going to percolate outside the school.

So it's unacceptable for a student

to use foul language towards the teacher or other classmates,

and that must be reacted to by the school,

is if you let that off, then the boundaries have changed.

Yeah, a child should take an over,

and the teachers run the back foot.

Yeah, a child reacting, behaving that way towards A, an adult,

but also B, a figure of authority,

just an unacceptable vocab.

No, exactly, and also we have continued no homework.

So that's also paying for teachers,

trying to get that child to learn.

Could the school have dealt with this matter

without suspension as it has upset the whole house?

Well, you know, I am really, I'm sorry there.

Subset the whole classroom on a regular basis.

Well, it's upset the school, it's upset the class,

it's upset nine classes a day in some cases,

and the suspension is not meant to target

the family of the parents, but in fact it does.

Personally, I've never seen suspension as particularly effective,

because it targets parents and their family

more so than a student.

But there are times, Alan, when the student has to be removed

from the school for a particular amount of time

to contemplate their behavior,

to have some sort of a contract put in place

for their reintroduction to school,

so that when they start again,

we might be, you know, in a better frame of mind.

I can ask you, you know, whilst you say suspensions,

maybe not the best route to go down,

in your experience, did you find that when the suspension

was utilized, when the student at the center

of that eventually returned to school,

had it given them time to reflect on what they did

and did they change their tune?

Only and so far as the remediation program

that was given to the parents when the student was suspended

was followed.

For instance, if a student is followed,

they'll be sent out with a schedule of work to complete.

Their homework will be sent home by email.

The year they will be in contact with the first,

so the school hasn't completely backed away.

If that's kept on, and if the student goes home

and unassesspension and they're treated as a poor junk,

God, love you, what did you do wrong?

Copstairs, there are watching television,

so we'll go out for a meal later on.

To mind them, they're all very bold in that school.

If that's the attitude to school,

the student will come back just as bad as ever.

If the attitude from the parents is to support the school

in the discipline structure,

then you're going to have an effective outcome

because, you know, I mean,

I wouldn't like to have been suspended from school

when I was in flannins because you would go home

and it would be worse when you got home.

Exactly.

Because you see, students or students,

they will test the boundaries,

but when the boundary goes beyond

and it affects the teaching and learning,

you have to stop them for their own sake.

Now, schools are a microcosm of society.

So let's say you have a student in a school

and they know that if they do this bad thing,

that the school will react by giving this particular sanction.

So the school gives the sanction.

Let's say they've told it used to f off,

so they've been suspended for a day,

or whatever it is,

because you need to support the teachers as well.

Otherwise, you undermine them

and it's hard enough of them now doing their job

because it's become very complex.

So the scenario is that student has told the teacher to f off.

The school has responded by issuing a one or two day suspension

and the suspension has been challenged by the parents.

Therefore, while the challenge is going on,

the student has to be in the class of the teacher.

He's told to f off.

So that's not good.

So that's not good.

And I ask the parents, hang on a second.

If you go down the route of trying to justify bad behavior,

it's the same thing as saying somebody uptown

that, look, you can jump that red light

because you don't like the color of it

and the guards will be ugly because we'll write you a note.

There were rules to be followed.

Yeah, you're in boldening their behavior.

Yeah, you're giving them a god complex.

You know, students need to behave,

students need to learn.

Schools do not suspend willy-nilly.

They don't like doing it.

They don't want to do it.

Traffic management.

Traffic nightmare.

And more often than that now, it's been challenged.

A listener has texted us in 086, 1800, 964

to say, good morning, Alan and John.

And the point they're making is this

would put off any young teacher to teach in secondary school.

And I think that's a key point, particularly, John,

when the issue of difficulties in finding teachers

as an issue we've discussed on morning focus

before, maybe not we yourself,

but definitely as a talking point,

this would be off putting to some people

who are thinking of a career as a teacher

and thinking, I don't think I could be dealing with that

on any sort of semi-regular basis, dealing with abuse

and also having your authority challenged

in front of a room of a load of other youngsters.

And for some people, that's a nightmare scenario

as to how to handle that effectively.

Yeah, that would lose in your cool.

Straight away, my reaction when you read the text

and great to get the text in, don't ever let that

put you off gone teaching or a young person going off teaching.

The majority of schools are very well managed

and they have a robust code of discipline.

We hear all sorts of horror stories about Quacozana schools.

They are actually quite rare.

You walk through any of the schools

in NS Town or around Claire

and you'll hear silent card or a student class time

where the students are allowing the teacher to do their job.

The parents are supporting the school in doing that

and the thing works fine.

There are situations and it is maybe growing slightly

that some students are being bowled and bowled when we called

and being supported by parents who know they're being bowled

and I would say to those parents, please don't do that.

Let the school do its job

because by letting the school do its job

and enforces coded discipline,

it's going to help you as a parent.

You can't let the child dictate everything.

That's a recipe for disaster.

Yeah, I think parents in that situation

are unwittingly setting their child on a continuing bad path.

What are the points you want to make about how schools

handle these kind of difficult situations anyway, John?

As I said earlier on, you know, a school,

any school has a coded discipline.

I guess instances like this is why they need it.

But how effective is the coded discipline

and how generally do they work

or can it differ quite a bit from school to school?

The schools coded discipline is only as effective as first of all

if it's implemented by all staff

in a very comprehensive and a very comprehensive way

that they're all doing the same thing if they're following it.

You can't have outliers.

You can't have someone saying,

I want Alan to spend because he dropped a paper on the floor

as opposed to, you know, why they really need to be

suspended or something else.

So it has to be supported by school management, very much so.

It has to be there to protect the teacher and the student

and it has to be bought into by the parents' council,

students' council, teachers and staff.

Now, once you have that system going,

once they know what it is,

it's going to be very effective

and it's going to be used very rarely.

Now, I must say that more schools have what they call

a coded discipline which is balanced against

their pastoral care system.

If the behavior is ongoing,

is there something else behind it

that we need to look at?

This might not be a discipline issue.

This could be an issue with the child being upset.

So you need to investigate that.

So all that's going on, but how it works Alan is,

it works from the 90% of little problems in school

are handled by the teacher as classroom management.

It can be just a look, and I was very good at that.

You won't look and it'd be very quiet.

Are you giving it to me now?

Yeah, there we go.

Are you can be just, listen, when you come down,

we'll just give it to you.

We'll use stuff, but you're at it,

because it's, it's impressing nobody.

Something like that can be enough.

And then if they keep going,

you're right, a report card goes to the year ahead,

the year ahead deals with it,

it's the buildup of report cards that would trigger

a detention force, which is quite effective,

because that's your whole in that school of 45 minutes,

and we make them do work that might not particularly want to do.

And then if they're still misbehaving after the detention,

you're looking towards a suspension.

A text in here, no, eight, six, eight,

hundred, nine, six, four.

This is someone who I think is maybe fond

of the corporal punishment era.

Saying years ago, you've got a hop of a duster,

and it would quite, you know,

now the students are allowed to do anything.

And the teacher isn't allowed to touch them.

Well, we don't want the teachers being allowed to,

you don't want the students

swearing using foul language towards the teacher

and disrupting a class, but by the same token,

you don't want teachers being able to hit students.

I mean, does a code discipline is there?

That'll be effective.

Well, that's very effective,

but this was a sort of fashion these days,

but I remember when I was going to school,

there was a particular teacher that when you missed

or you acted up in that particular teacher's class,

he had a big bunch of keys and he threw the keys at you.

Oh, yeah.

And the biggest punishment was he'd make you pick up

the keys and bring them back to him.

So, you know, you didn't,

we all got to belt out the keys from time to time.

Well, you had an imprint of a key

embedded in your forehead.

But you mean the bigger situation is here is this.

Parents are doing the best for their students.

Schools want to help you.

If the school is affecting a disciplined sanction

because your child has been a renter misbehaving,

if you can support the school in that,

it's enormously effective.

Now, sometimes schools get it wrong

and you can challenge that,

but, you know, helicopter parenting,

which is becoming a thing in education systems

is where the boundary goes from parents assisting the school,

which is always welcome.

Monitoring, almost.

To overseeing must go down to be there,

maybe watching almost everything

and situations where some students who are bald at times

are brought home and sat down at the table

and asked, okay, what happened to them?

Did anyone give out your my little deer?

So we can ring the school tomorrow in email

and say, you shouldn't be at that.

That started system is not great.

It doesn't have staff, it doesn't have the children.

Okay, any final points you want to make, John?

Work with your school.

Really do.

I mean, just know that they're there to help you

not just in educating your child,

but also remember that the secondary school system

is the last chance that we have to keep them on the rails.

And if a school has no rules,

if it's all willing,

even if we could do what they want,

that's not good training for the rest of their lives.

No, definitely not.

That is a good note on which to finish.

Well, Tom, thank you very much.

That is the former Deputy Principal

of Rice College and Educational Consultant, John Burns.