Schools are moving towards ‘no excuses’ policies to compensate for “poor teaching”, a leading academic has claimed. 

“I have heard this line that ‘no excuses’ is necessary so all teachers can teach,” she says. “I’m thinking, so we need no excuses for students so we can have excuses for teachers? I am not going be popular for saying that, but I don’t care. In the research we are doing the teacher is a variable in disruptive behaviour and I don’t think that gets talked about enough.”

She says the tendency to try and adopt policies from elsewhere without properly considering where that policy has come from and why it was adopted in thet context is highly damaging. 

“People don’t look at the DNA of the policy, at where it has come from and the different cultural context in which it may have arisen,” she says. “Also, what will be tolerated by parents in one school will not be tolerated in another.”

In the interview, she also touches on the need for “productive discipline”, having a policy where support not punishment is central and the fact ineffective behaviour strategies “hard bake”  students to be disruptive. 

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