Report’s call for early action on bad behaviour welcomed

May 16 2008 by David Williamson, Western Mail

THE Children’s Commissioner for Wales last night gave an enthusiastic welcome to a major report which calls for early intervention to combat truancy and misbehaviour in the classroom.

A two-year independent review, published yesterday and led by one of Wales’ leading academics, found that poor literacy and numeracy skills, as well as family breakdown, can drive a child towards bad behaviour. It also reported that many teaching professionals had little or no training in managing behaviour or attendance.

Children’s Commissioner Keith Towler welcomed Professor Ken Reid’s National Attendance and Behaviour Review, which recommends that action should be taken “as soon as pupils start to show signs of behaviour problems”.

Education Minister Jane Hutt now plans to produce an action plan aimed at tackling the issues the report has raised by early 2009.

Mr Towler told the Western Mail: “It’s an enormously valuable contribution to tackling a problem we have been talking and thinking about for such a long time.”

Confident that acting early in a child’s life to tackle disruptive behaviour can help secure the child a brighter future, he added: “If you are working with children in any setting you have got to have an optimistic view about how we can make children’s lives better.”

Conservative Assembly Education Minister Alun Cairns said: “It is clear that in many cases unidentified needs among pupils can often lead to truancy and poor behaviour. A lack of support – in areas such as speech and language therapy – can also lead to a poor identification of and reaction to ongoing problems. Schools need clear guidance as to how to best tackle issues relating to pupil behaviour and truancy.”

He added: “School discipline is at the heart of a good education system. Children must learn respect for others and for authority at an early age.”

Kirsty Williams, Liberal Democrat Assembly education spokesperson, said: “I welcome the report’s calls to tackle bad behaviour from the beginning; this can be done with smaller class sizes, better trained teachers and a more stimulating curriculum. Reducing class sizes from a maximum of 30 to 25 will reduce teacher workloads and give them more time to address individual pupils’ needs.

“Discipline should not be about punishment – but should focus primarily on creating a teaching environment, which prevents unruly behaviour and bullying from taking place.”

She added: “The Welsh Assembly Government must look at the root causes of truancy and bad behaviour. It has been found a third of all pupils who play truant do so because they are being bullied, we need to ensure each school has a trained member of staff to counsel children who are victims of bullying.”

Education Minister Jane Hutt said: “We will now need to assess how the recommendations can build on our other key initiatives, such as the school effectiveness framework and 14-19 Learning Pathways to ensure that we are putting in place positive changes which will make a real long term difference to education in Wales.

“It is now my intention to set up a working group to develop an action plan responding to the recommendations and I am looking to produce an action plan by early in the New Year.”

The National Behaviour and Attendance Review – what the teachers said:

David Evans, Wales Secretary of teaching union the NUT:

“We welcome any issue of funding and strategy that helps address behavioural issues. Behavioural issues go beyond the school. Schools do make sure they have appropriate policies to deal with these and teachers work to them. Individual issues with pupils however go beyond this remit and there are other outside issues which need to be addressed. Reports such as these are always interesting for the Government to consider.”

Mr Evans also stressed that behavioural and attendance problems and poor three Rs skills were something that affected the minority rather than the majority of pupils in schools.

Elaine Edwards, of Welsh teaching union UCAC:

“We support the view that some of the curriculum developed – for example the Foundation Phase – and the more skills-based curricula will go some way to dealing with issues regarding literacy, numeracy, arithmetic and behaviour problems, but we have serious concerns that insufficient funding will undermine these developments.

“I agree there is certainly less respect for authority figures. and parents need to see themselves as part of a partnership with schools to ensure the best education and attitudes are instilled in their children.

“We also welcome the recommendations for more training in dealing with bad behaviour, but again this will need to be properly funded, and it is a time when lots of different initiatives are competing for money.”

Chris Howard, UK vice-president of the National Association of Head Teachers.

“Generally we would welcome the report as Professor Ken Reid is a respected expert in his field and deserves to be listened to.

“We fully agree it is essential to develop children’s basic and personal skills and to have these fixed as early as possible. That is exactly why the WAG should fully fund the Foundation Phase. We think there is a link between the two and we will be pushing for that on the back of this report. Get the Foundation Phase right and we will begin to address many of the problems referred to by Professor Reid.”

The NAHT was concerned about the NBAR recommendations’ impact if implemented in schools.

Mr Howard, also a head teacher at Lewis School in Pengam, said: “We are worried some of the suggestions put forward to do with exclusions are not workable as they are currently read – for example the recommendation that after 10 days of exclusion, contacting multi-agencies would be obligatory. These meetings would be difficult to arrange because we have to involve a number of people – particularly difficult when their diaries are full.”

Read the NBAR summary and full report by using the links below