Want to cure bad behaviour in the classroom? - Here's a simple solution.

I have two glasses.
Glass A is a really well made G&T.
Glass B is also a G&T but nowhere as good as the first.
How do I improve Glass B?
Simple.
I pour half of it into a jug and then top up Glass B from Glass A.
I now top up Glass A from the jug.

Hopefully you can see the flaw in this simple solution.
Yes, I’ve improved the quality of Glass B but I’ve also decreased the quality of Glass A.
Now, instead of having one really good glass of G&T and one poor mixture, I have two sort of “ok” glasses.

In essence, this is what our Education department want to do with our Secondary school system. Mix everyone together and get rid of the problems besetting some of our High schools.

However, my example must be wrong because the Department think that there will be no adverse effect on Glass A. Somehow magically, both Glass A and Glass B will improve without any further interventions.

The Glass A kids will have more influence on the overall mix because there are more of them. No, that can’t be right because there are actually less of them overall.

Perhaps will work because the majority of kids in the Glass B schools do actually want to work but are being held back by a minority with undue influence. So by introducing some Glass A kids, that influence will decrease because…

You can see I’m having a problem here. I just can’t understand how it’s going to work.

You see, schools aren’t all about the kids. Schools are about the whole school community which should be led from the top.

If anyone has undue influence over a school it should be the Head and the Staff of the school. If they are unable to set the tone and ethos then the problem is much bigger than one of mere numbers and will not be cured by mixing everyone together and shaking up the pot.

Most of Guernsey’s Education Committee view the 11+ as divisive and outdated and a major contributor to this problem.

They are half right.

But their solution in a lot of peoples eyes seems to be to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Dilute the effectiveness of the one well performing school for a hoped for benefit overall.

You look at our Grammar school and you see excellent results and (in the main) well behaved students who are a credit to their community. The majority will stay on for higher education and will go off to university.

Then you look at the High schools and see somewhat mixed to poor results with some very poorly behaved individuals. A minority will progress into further education but the majority will not and therefore won’t go to university.

But that majority of High school pupils are still well behaved and most will be a credit to their schools and their community. They are not bad kids and they are not failures. They are just not as good at passing the narrow range tests which pass for measuring the value of education these days.

The title of this piece promised a simple solution to cure bad behaviour in the classroom and here it is.

Remove it.

Simply take the bad behaviour out of the classroom and out of the school.

A larger part of the problem is not the school, it is everything else which affects those kids who are causing the problems, most of which occurs outside of the school gates.

Leave teachers to teach and don’t continue to leave them with the addition burdens of trying to sort out society’s problems as reflected in these disaffected children and young adults.

Don’t dilute the overall mix and hope it will work. Instead, take out all of those who can’t or don’t want to learn and give them the focussed and professional attention they need to sort out their problems.

Don’t give up on them. Just recognise that they need special attention which cannot be delivered in a mainstream school system without there being a substantial detrimental effect on the other children in that system.

Every child deserves the chance of a good education.
 
At the moment, we are failing too many children because we refuse to accept that not every child deserves the same education. Not everyone is suited to an academic system focussed on passing exams so why do we keep trying to give them one?
 
Look around. We don’t just need academics. We need postmen and plumbers, bank clerks and builders, retail workers and rest home carers. Our society need a whole range of people with differing skill sets.
 
Why not have an education system which recognises this and ensures that we not only produce these much needed people but we also give them the skills to become the best that they can be.
 
At the moment we seem to have a system designed by those who have benefited from and were best suited to an academic system. 

We also seem fixated on academic exam results as the sole measure of a person’s worth or a school’s effectiveness.
 
There’s a lot that needs to change but first we need to change our mindset and sadly that will take a different approach than that currently being pursued by the Department.
 
I know I’m proposing what sounds like the old “Technical Schools” system but what’s wrong with that.
 
The Tech system was replaced because it failed. It failed because the Techs were seen as a second class system and funded accordingly.
 
Different doesn’t mean second class and it doesn’t mean cheap. It just means different. Starve any school of funding and the results are easily predictable. We’ve seen that already and are only now starting to make amends.
 
Guernsey could lead the way in devising a system of education which allows every child to get the best education suitable to their needs.
 
Now that’s a Vision worth pursuing.