TEACHERS need better training and support to deal with violent and disruptive children, Association of Teachers and Lecturers’ president Jennifer Bangs, said in an attack on the Government’s inclusion policy.
“Hour upon hour of energy-draining, confidence-sapping work goes into containing and maintaining in the classroom those youngsters whose behaviour is persistently anti-social,” she told the conference in her presidential address.
The ATL has drawn up a four-point plan to tackle such behaviour including:
a stronger emphasis on behaviour management in initial teacher-training;
ministers to earmark cash for in-service training in behaviour management;
cash for intervention strategies aimed at the under-five;
local inclusion centres to support schools in dealing with disruptive pupils.
Ms Bangs called on ministers to consider the plan and introduce new guidelines.
Children are turned off teaching as a career by seeing the stress their own teachers are under, according to a Mori survey carried out for the union.
Only 16 per cent of secondary pupils said they were likely to go into teaching, researchers found, with half citing the levels of stress teachers were under as the main reason.
But among ethnic-minority pupils, 22 per cent said they were considering teaching as an option.
However, shortages of male teachers look set to grow as only 9 per cent of boys are considering joining the profession.
