What is the best way to control a class?

Indiscipline is an infectious disease that will destroy a school - but pupils can't just be forced to behave. Jonty Driver explains how to keep order

THE crux of good discipline in a school is what happens in the classroom. One of the ironies of our school system is that the more effective one is as a teacher, the less time one spends in the classroom. Instead, one gets promoted to administration, management and - with luck - leadership, too.

So it is easy for heads and other senior staff in a school to forget what it is like to be a teacher faced with an unruly class; but if a teacher fails in basic control - if when he or she says, “Now sit down, be quiet, and listen”, nothing happens, except perhaps an increase in disorder - it is not just that teacher or that class which is in trouble. Indiscipline is as infectious as 'flu; the class will take its bad habits onwards, and other teachers will find control more difficult, outside the classroom as well as inside.

When I became a head, having suffered myself as a student-teacher from a class out of control, I told all my teachers that, if ever they found one of their classes refusing to be taught and to behave decently, they could summon me - and I would drop whatever I was doing to come to help. I meant it, too: I was quite prepared to walk out of a governors’ meeting or a conference with a parent to sort out a crisis in a classroom. If I couldn't do that, I wasn't worth the money I was paid.

On one occasion, a very senior person - a long-serving schoolmaster, in many ways celebrated for his service to the school - asked for help. One particular class, he said, was making his life a misery. He had tried every professional ploy he knew, including the normal punishments, such as after-school detention; they were still determined to prove that they weren't going to be taught by him.

So I told him I would take the next lesson for him. I arrived early, and stood behind the door so the boys wouldn't see me at once. One could tell from the way they behaved before they spotted me just how unruly they had become: they sauntered in, any old how, dropping their books on any desk, making a din, greeting their friends Their reaction to the presence of their headmaster was rather comical.

I said nothing, merely put a finger on my lips, and waited until the last boy had arrived. Poor lad, he was so busy chucking his bag on the teacher’s desk and wondering loudly where old so-and-so had got to that he didn’t spot me for some seconds, and I clearly had the ring-leader in my sights.

Anyway, for the next 10 minutes we practised how one entered a classroom in an orderly and respectful fashion; then we practised putting books down, and standing next to one’s desk until one was told to sit; then we practised sitting at desks designated in alphabetical order; then we practised answering names by putting hands up; and so on. It was very boring, very quiet, and an icy-tempered 20 minutes; quite deliberately, I kept my voice down to a whisper. Then I perched on the edge of the teacher's desk and asked them why they thought I was being such a bastard to them.

They knew perfectly well, of course. Nearly all the boys in the class - including the one I had identified as the likely ring-leader - were thoroughly pleasant people, not trouble-makers, not ill-disciplined elsewhere. They had been making their teacher's life a misery, and they knew it. So I told them they had a choice: either they gave their teacher the chance to teach them, or I would make their lives a misery.

Yet, if a class - or, indeed, a school - chooses not to be taught, it can easily make itself unteachable. When I stood up in front of a school of 800 adolescent and post-adolescent boys and girls to say, “Be quiet”, there was no way that I could have enforced that control. The assembly was quiet because that was what it chose. If it had decided to go on talking, even the intervention of every member of the teaching staff present could not have stopped the talking.

So it is a kind of social contract; and I suspect that the failure of discipline in a school is often caused by a deliberate and particular breaking of that social contract, rather than by a general collapse. That is one of the reasons why among two schools in a similar neighbourhood, one may be well-disciplined and well-behaved, and the other a nightmare.

Brutal discipline is seldom effective, even superficially; nor is the kind of discipline where teachers try to align themselves with the pupils. What is needed is an understanding, by pupils as well as teachers and parents, that, without co-operation, there is merely chaos.

Recently, I spoke to an assembly in a predominantly black school in a South African township, where there had been a breakdown in discipline sufficiently bad to require assistance by the police. I made exactly the same point there - having carefully consulted the headmaster first.

If the pupils chose not to accept discipline, even machine-guns wouldn’t get them back into order. In the end, it was they themselves who chose whether or not they were going to accept authority; but, if they didn’t, they couldn’t expect the benefits of education.

We need to learn that lesson in this country, too.

It’s not so bad being in the “front line”

Matthew Godfrey is a new teacher at an inner-city comprehensive. In his fourth dispatch he despairs of those who put the profession down

ANYONE eavesdropping on some of the conversations I have had over the past few weeks might have thought I was a soldier on leave from battle. Questions have included: “How’s life on the front line?”, “Any injuries yet?” and “Morale getting a little low, then?” In fact, far less glamorously, I am a newly qualified teacher in my second term at an inner-city comprehensive.

This line of questioning is not surprising. Recently, phrases such as “recruitment crisis”, “bureaucratic nightmare”, “absurdly low pay” and “classroom battlefield” have been scattered through most reports about the state of the teaching profession.

I probably would be disenchanted if I felt I was facing the difficulties of teaching in a challenging school alone. In general, though, I feel that I work in a supportive, well-motivated environment that is trying to improve and is on my side. Consequently, I do not agree with most of the complaints voiced by so many disgruntled members and former members of the profession.

Take classroom discipline. I have had my share of difficulties. The teenagers at my school happen to be some of the most challenging of their breed, with a wide variety of ability and motivation. But the worst moments - including being called a “prick” by one 15-year-old - have been dealt with quickly and effectively after I reported them to senior management (the boy was excluded for two days). Not once have I felt isolated in dealing with serious misbehaviour.

I have not felt overburdened by the “excessive paperwork” that so many teachers complain about. I do have to write detailed lesson plans and keep records of pupils’ achievements but these are not redundant tasks: they help me to organise activities in a structured, sequential manner, and also to keep track of progress.

Far from feeling professionally constrained by any kind of external prescription - the national curriculum or Ofsted - I continue to be surprised at the amount of freedom I have to tackle my subject, English, in the way I see fit.

When planning my teaching of a novel, for example, I spend a lot of time selecting what I think are the best ideas and tailoring lessons accordingly - a time-consuming and exhausting affair, and far from foolproof, given my lack of experience. It is a curious trait among teachers - and a folly - that we end up reinventing the wheel so often. More efficient sharing of good teaching practice is something that my department, the school and, it seems, the whole education sector is committed to achieving. This can only be a good thing.

Some commentators have suggested that the behaviour and attitude of teenagers these days is such that they are unteachable. After only one term, it seems a depressingly negative attitude and, in any case, I reckon that at least some of the discipline problems I have in the classroom occur because my approach is at fault, not because of some intrinsic problem with pupils attending “challenging” inner-city schools.

Pitching work at slightly the wrong level is the easiest trap into which to fall. Admittedly, my job is not made any easier by the number of pupils who arrive at the school with very low levels of literacy, and most of my classes have at least one pupil who does not speak English fluently. Consequently, if the tasks and instructions I give are a little unclear, the pupils are likely to lose concentration or confidence and start misbehaving.

I try to maintain the principle of positive discipline - highlighting and rewarding achievement in order to boost confidence and motivation. The simplest techniques have proved the most effective: collecting reward stamps motivates most 13-year-olds, and all pupils respond well to seeing their books marked regularly with meaningful comments inside.

Obviously, these positive methods are far preferable to a punitive approach - which, regrettably, I found myself drifting towards at the end of my first term, possibly because my patience had worn thin. The fact is, raising my voice regularly at a class seldom improves behaviour in the long term and does nothing for my own motivation.

No one becomes a teacher for the money, although higher salaries for teachers would be desirable. Even on this front, however, things are moving in the right direction. When I was appointed, my previous work experience was recognised and I have started several notches up the teachers’ pay scale. The fact that there are too few teachers means that career opportunities are open for those who want to climb the ladder.

Negative attitudes are not helping to attract much-needed graduates into what I believe can be a highly rewarding and worthwhile profession.

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Factsheets: Bullying	\|	Text 2. Politics and education

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