David Henderson reports from the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association’s conference in Aviemore
* Classroom indiscipline is a “serious endemic and deteriorating problem”, Albert McKay, union president, said.
Mr McKay, an Aberdeenshire principal teacher of guidance, said that the co-operative and conscientious majority of young people were regularly compromised by a “small yet significant disruptive minority”. The drive for “inclusion at all costs” had to be challenged with the introduction of an “implications for the majority test”.
Codes of conduct in class were “quickly discredited, rendered inoperable and almost worthless by a few pupils”. He demanded alternative provision far earlier in the discipline process and before the point of permanent exclusion.