The most surprising things make a difference to children and their behaviour, such as standing at the classroom door to greet them.
Scottish Executive figures on pupil exclusions suggest that bad discipline continues to be a major problem. The numbers expelled or suspended last year fell by only 0.3 per cent to 38,656. Removing the offending youngsters is obviously not the whole answer.
“Aberdeenshire does not have a particular problem with discipline,” says Jim Banks, the head of educational services. In fact, Aberdeenshire was well down the national table with 16 out of 1,000 exclusions. “But, in response to the national discipline task group’s recommendations, we wanted to address positively the very real concerns about children’s behaviour and to improve the ethos in our schools.”
As one element of the authority’s strategy, the City of Birmingham’s innovative Framework for Intervention was adopted on the recommendation of the council’s senior educational psychologist, John Proctor. “The beauty of the framework,” explains Dr Proctor, “is that you don’t involve experts. The main thrust is to help teachers develop their own strategies.”
A 15-month pilot project has just been completed at Portlethen Academy. Portlethen is a dormitory satellite of Aberdeen and was recently found to have the highest proportion of teenagers per population in the whole of Europe. The academy is described as “similar to an inner city school”.
George Clark, principal guidance teacher, and trainee educational psychologist Christeen Waring began the pilot with a small survey. “It was a baseline questionnaire concerning the pupils, their behaviour - for example, timekeeping - and the teachers’ own conduct in classroom management. The teachers were asked to think about these questions and see if changes were needed,” says Mr Clark.
Some weeks later the list was re-evaluated. “I was delighted to see there was a substantial shift in the right direction. There were no negatives,” he says.
Speaking of the teacher who now welcomes his pupils into class, he explains: “He concentrated on his approach to his pupils. That was the basis of it, teachers looking again at what they did and its effect on the classroom environment.”
Headteacher Albert Swinborn says: “Don’t get us wrong. Where there is outright bad behaviour, we confront that and deal with it strongly. The framework is not an alternative. It is one way of helping us as professionals to provide the best we can in terms of a positive learning environment.”
Bill Mackie
