Punitive approaches and exclusions do not change pupils’ behaviour, MSPs have been told.
The Scottish Parliament’s Education, Children and Young People Committee heard a plea not to reverse 20 years of work reducing school exclusions, based on what the University of Strathclyde’s Dr Joan Mowat described as “greater recognition of the underlying reasons for why children behave as they do”.
However, to make restorative approaches to behaviour management work, the committee also heard that teachers need more time, smaller class sizes and better support from senior school managers - as well as specialist teachers and support staff.
Nick Smiley, chair of the Association of Scottish Principal Educational Psychologists (ASPEP), told the committee yesterday that in 2007 there were around 86 pupils with additional support needs per educational psychologist, but as of 2022 that figure had risen to 660.
Meanwhile, Mike Corbett, Scotland national official for the NASUWT teaching union, said that while restorative approaches did work for the “vast majority of pupils”, there was “a vacuum above that”. He said there was “a lack of support from senior managers” and that a “smirking apology” from a pupil did not restore trust or dignity for teachers.
Mr Corbett, who stressed that he had 25 years of experience in the classroom, also argued that misbehaviour did not always have distress or trauma, citing, for example, teenage boys who “swear at the teacher as performance, to show off in front of their pals”.
The Westminster government’s behaviour tsar, Tom Bennett, in written evidence to the committee, said the emphasis on behaviour policies such as restorative practice in Scotland was “well-meant but essentially ineffective”.
“These techniques simply lack any evidence of large scale or scalable success,” he said. “They often lead to schools massively deteriorating in their behaviour cultures, because staff don’t have the time to use them as intended, because they don’t work for most students anyway, and because students realise that nothing of any gravity will happen to them if they misbehave.”
Ultimately, however, the consensus from most of those giving evidence seemed to be that the approach in Scotland was right, but that too often it was poorly implemented.
The committee session followed reports of increasing violence in Scottish schools, with the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association claiming teachers are being confronted with an “aggression epidemic” and education secretary Jenny Gilruth last month announcing a behaviour summit.
The committee heard from EIS teaching union’s assistant secretary Anne Keenan that, instead of proper restorative practice, some teachers were having quick discussions with pupils at the classroom door while as many as 26 other children were waiting to be taught.
Ms Keenan said that “teachers need time to develop these relational approaches” and called for the government to deliver on its class-sizes pledge dating back to before the SNP came to power in 2007, as well as its more recent promise to reduce teacher class-contact time.
She also said: “If we are really going to invest in these practices, we need to give our teachers the time, the training, the space and we need to look at the resourcing issues.”
Ms Keenan called for “critical investment” in “core education funding” - not in additional funding streams such as the Pupil Equity Fund that “can’t be relied upon in years to come”.
Dr Mowat, a University of Strathclyde senior lecturer, said that as a depute headteacher, she had been “very despondent at the same pupils standing outside my door day after day, no matter what I did”. The only thing that made a difference was “investing time and effort and care and love in them” - and that required proper resourcing.
Cheryl Burnett, chair of the National Parent Forum of Scotland, said underfunding was “fundamentally and detrimentally impacting children and young people”.
More support for teachers
Colin Morrison, co-director of the Children’s Parliament, called for more support for teachers and hit out at the cuts to services such as school libraries.
Dr Morrison said: “I’ve heard that four local authorities, at least, in the last week are closing their school libraries. School libraries are a place of sanctuary. They are a place where a kid who’s struggling can go - not stand in a corridor - but go to a library, get a book and be read to.”
ASPEP chair Nick Smiley said that universal support in school was “absolutely essential” so that all children learned about respect and emotional regulation, with targeted and intensive support put in place for the pupils that need it most.
However, Carrie Lindsay, Fife Council’s director of education and children’s services, said that for children to benefit from universal interventions, they had to be attending school regularly. Since the pandemic hit “we have had a real problem with attendance”, she said.
Ms Lindsay said: “That interrupted learning means it’s really difficult to do a personal and social education programme with a group of young people, because they’re not all there all of the time.”
She said she visited schools and nurseries every week and in some nursery classes there would be less than half the expected number of children.
Ms Lindsay added: “It’s not just about their behaviours, it’s about their attendance. What we are seeing is that families, they didn’t send children to school in the pandemic so some of them haven’t re-engaged with that value of schooling.
“Collectively, as a society, we have to make sure that people start to re-value education and attending school...It’s not just the people in the schools that are going to make this difference.”
