Meeting of the Parliament 06 March 2024 [Draft]
This is a human rights issue. It is often perceived that, if someone wants action to deal with behaviour, distress, violence or whatever we call it, they are somehow in favour of punishment and against understanding. That is not where I am. The minister has heard me say previously that there has been great movement since I was at school. There was lots of punishment then and there is now a lot of understanding, but perhaps we understand a little bit too much. It is about getting the balance right. We need to provide a safe place in school for learning purposes, but we also need to understand the root causes of distress and the variety of different reasons why it is sometimes exhibited in violence and poor behaviour.
It is often said that we need to get it right for every child—that is the slogan and the brand—but some pupils, parents and teachers think that we get it right for the subject child but not for everyone else in the class. That needs to be taken into account when we devise policies.
There is an interconnection between additional support for learning and factors such as absence, distress and violent behaviour—they are all interlinked. I have had two of the sort of cases that Liam Kerr pointed out. The most striking recent example involved a mother of a daughter in Edinburgh. She did not have much money, but, because her daughter was going through hell at school, she decided that she would pay to put her into a private school. She could not afford it, but she thought that she had to do it for the sake of her child. If we are getting to a state in which a state school cannot provide a safe environment and families are having to put their children into private care to keep them safe, something has gone wrong.
I think that we have made progress in that there is now an open debate and there is no shame in teachers saying that they have had enough and speaking out. That is a good bit of progress. The minister’s acknowledgement of the issue in her statement last year was also progress. Violence in schools is now recognised as an issue that we can openly debate and discuss.
The statement at the weekend about exclusions and the subsequent remarks today about consequences are a step in the right direction. The Government is sending signals to headteachers, education leaders, local authorities and teachers that the education secretary will have their back if they make a professional judgment that the right thing to do in certain circumstances is to remove a child from a school—to remove them not to nothing, but to other support. Exclusion should not be excluded but should be a consideration.
What is next? I think that we need to look at the nurture programme. If it is implemented badly, it results in an incentive for some people to behave badly. It should be more inclusive. It should not be seen to single out individuals who behave badly for special treatment. We need to look at that.
An interesting fact that came up at last week’s Education, Children and Young People Committee evidence session on additional support for learning was that the design of new school buildings needs to be taken into account. Sometimes, those large, open-space buildings are not designed to deal with additional support for learning requirements.
The guidance needs to be updated, and we have had an indication from the minister that that will happen. It needs to set out boundaries and clear consequences. If we can get all those factors in place to send a clear signal to teachers, that will be a step in the right direction.
The one issue that we cannot ignore is that of resources, although it is tough to address it, especially in difficult financial times. We need to implement the reduction in contact time and give teachers more space. We need to give them the resources, the additional speech and language therapists and the additional specialist support that allows them to upskill to be able to deal with the behaviours in their class. If we can do all of those things, we might make some progress on the issue.