The very first time I came into conflict with senior leadership (it wouldn’t be the last) was when I asked my new deputy head if it would be alright to have the sixth-form students call me by my first name. It would break down the unnecessary barriers to learning and foster a warm, collaborative climate, I argued with all the enthusiasm of a teacher in their first year of the job. The deputy head let me make my impassioned plea and, when I’d finished, replied firmly: “That’s not the way we do things here.”

Colleges and schools with sixth forms all have to make decisions about the way they’re going to do things when it comes to the older students. Getting the balance right - allowing students a certain amount of freedom while still ensuring they get their work done and follow the rules - can be tricky. When a school gets it right, it results in happy, productive kids and teachers. When they get it wrong, it can be miserable for everyone.

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Recently I had the pleasure of being in a school assembly in which the headteacher was addressing the new sixth form for the first time. I was hugely impressed by the way in which he emphasised that they were now the role models for the younger students: that they would be given the freedom to take the next two years of education in whatever direction they chose and that there would no longer be anyone breathing down their necks, demanding compliance with every little rule. The corollary of that, he was quite clear, was that it would also be down to them to make something of their time, to get their work done, to contribute to the wider school community, to act like the grown-ups. It was a bold statement of intent, but one that seemed to hit exactly the right note with the students.

Not long after the head’s inspirational speech, I sat in on another assembly where a senior leader took a markedly different approach. The hall full of eager young adults were moaned at for not arriving in an “orderly manner” and chastised for what was deemed to be a lack of respect, as they continued to talk while taking their seats. In a heartbeat, you could feel the level of resentment rise throughout the room, and knew that the students had already lost interest in whatever might be coming next.

This approach reminded me of a previous head of sixth form I once worked with. When it became apparent that the Year 12 students at the school were saying uncomplimentary things about their experiences, and suggesting to the Year 11 students they might want to look at other options for their post-16 studies, the head of sixth form’s response was not, as you might hope, to understand what it was the students were unhappy about. Rather, the solution was to try and segregate the sixth form from the rest of the school, thereby ensuring that the two groups of students didn’t have any further opportunity to communicate. Hardly an enlightened approach.

Semi-adult status

I spoke to a group of Year 12 students recently to ask them what they liked most about moving into the semi-adult status of life beyond GCSEs. The results were not unexpected. They liked not being subject to so much petty rule-keeping, like being allowed to go to the loo during lessons, being given the benefit of the doubt with a forgotten homework assignment, or not having to line up to get into a classroom. They liked being given more autonomy, to arrive later or to leave early occasionally. They liked the free lessons - sorry, private study periods. They really liked having access to coffee.

Deciding how the older students are to be treated is not an easy balance to achieve. On the one hand, they are more mature, more capable of self-governance, and often very responsive to being given extra freedoms. Then again, some of them will continue to take the piss for as long as anyone is foolish enough to let them. Although it’s surely the case that the ones causing concern are a minority, and so it doesn’t seem fair to punish the rest of the students with a draconian regime, just because of a few idiots. Given the freedom to make mistakes, some people are inevitably going to do just that, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. After all, aren’t we always telling the students that making mistakes is a crucial part of the learning process? 

One aspect of becoming a functioning member of society is learning to get your shit together without Mum, Dad or your teachers standing over you. If we don’t give the older students the chance to get things wrong at school, surrounded by supportive teachers and pastoral systems, it’s only going to be worse for them when the stabilisers come off and they finally get a chance to screw up in the real world. 

Callum Jacobs is a supply teacher in the UK