Spare the rod policy leads to unruly classrooms
Sanctions available to schools since corporal punishment was abolished are “totally inadequate” at reasserting authority in the classroom, teachers say.
Spare the rod policy has led to unruly classrooms
Sanctions
lack same deterrent effect as corporal punishment, teachers say
Sanctions available to schools since corporal punishment was abolished
25 years ago are “totally inadequate” at reasserting authority in the classroom
and lack the same deterrent effect, they said yesterday.
While rejecting a return to the cane, members of the Association of
Teachers and Lecturers condemned existing sanctions such as detention and
suspension.
“Novel” punishments are needed to allow teachers to reassert their
authority in the classroom, they said.
Delegates at the association’s annual conference voted unanimously for
research into “effective” disciplinary methods.
Teacher
“When corporal punishment was abolished nothing was put in its place
that had equivalent deterrent powers,” said Julian Perfect, a teacher from
London.
Laws forbidding state schools from using the cane or slipper to
discipline pupils were introduced in 1987, and a decade later in independent
schools. But Perfect pointed out that subsequent governments had failed to give
teachers sufficient sanctions.
Government
failures
He added that while teachers have statutory authority to discipline
pupils whose behaviour is unacceptable, governments have failed to suggest
methods for making authority “meaningful”.
Suspensions and expulsions were now handed out all too rarely amid
pressure on schools to reduce the number of pupils who are excluded from
school, the conference also heard.
Research by the teachers’ association suggested pupil behaviour had
declined further in recent years.
As published in Gulf News, 6 April 2012.
Picture credit: Unknown
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