Executive Member (Personal Capacity) DESPITE THE highly publicised statements of NASUWT General Secretary Nigel de Gruchy, disruptive pupils are not the single biggest problem confronting teachers. Pupils are not the cause of the many problems experienced by teachers.
Unless a correct analysis of who is to blame is made the conclusions which are arrived at are inevitably going to be wrong. By targeting individually identified pupils, the NASUWT lets the real culprits - the Tories - off the hook.
Take the case of the Ridings school in Halifax. There are undeniably a large number of pupils with challenging, and, in many cases, unacceptable behaviour. No teacher should have to put up with either verbal or physical abuse and trade unions have a responsibility to protect their members from such treatment. But why are there so many pupils with emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBD) in the Ridings? Could it be the presence nearby of two selective grantmaintained and two church schools, all of which shun the less academically successful working class pupils who go to the Ridings? Margaret Tulloch of the Campaign for State Education has called upon Gillian Shephard to "be willing to admit that the problems could be due to her policy in encouraging selection".
The introduction of opting out and exam league tables has led to a massive increase in the number of pupil exclusions. Maior's obsession with "a gram. mar school in every town" and a return to full-blown selection will, if not defeated, lead inexorably to under-resourced sink schools.
Local management of schools also contributes to the problem, as the requirement upon LEAs to delegate ever more of the education budget to individual schools leaves them unable to target resources to where they are needed. Take Manton school in Nottinghamshire.
Here a solution - one to one tuition for the boy at the centre of the dispute - has collapsed as the school's budget is unable to support the L7000 per term it would cost (and parents of other pupils have, not unreasonably, argued that the money should be for the education of all pupils in the school). The LEA is not allowed by LMS regulations to give the school the L14,000 or so it would need this year.
More generally, LEAs simply don't have the resources to allow for the educational needs of individual children to be met. Furthermore, the cuts in school budgets and the inexorable rise in class sizes are making the situation more difficult. As EBD children, frustrated by their own problems, receive less and less of the individual attention they need, is it surprising that their behaviour becomes less and less acceptable?
And the government's solution?
Certainly not resources but a cheap ano reacionar mora crus de inc! "bad" parents. In this they are aided and abetted by the leadership of the NASUWT who are only too happy to see the scapegoating of teachers (remember OFSTED supremo Chris Woodhead's attack upon 15,000 "failing teachers") replaced by the scapegoating of "failing parents". If parents had blamed teachers for the underfunding of education, a campaign such as FACE would never have been possible. It is vital that parents and teachers unite to campaign for the only viable long-term solutions - adequate funding and the dismandling of the education "marketplace".
Socialist Outlook 110 • November 9 1996.