The First step to recovery
....is to admit that Scotland has a problem with violence in schools.
I’ve written an opinion piece in todays’ Scottish Mail on Sunday today, which outlines why I think Scottish schools face huge challenges on their behaviour systems: chiefly, because the system is built around the idea that children don’t need meaningful boundaries, and instead will all naturally behave perfectly after a pastoral conversation. Which is obviously absurd. Worse, it creates schools where misbehaviour is common because it is tolerated. Tolerated, it becomes normal.
As this article helps to demonstrate, violence and less extreme misbehaviour is frequently ignored, covered up, or not reported in schools. I get DMs most days from Scottish teachers telling me how awful things are in their schools., and how abusive the environment is, but leaders can’t or won’t do anything because the official advice is not to exclude or suspend, and that sanctions or reprimands don’t work, and make the school look bad.
It’s good to see this begin to get the attention it deserves. The first step to recovery is to admit that one has a problem in the first place. And in Scottish education there are still a lot of people in absolute denial that there is a problem, which means they’ll never improve. But here’s what seemed to work in England: teachers and people on the inside refusing to stop talking about this, until people in charge could no longer ignore it. At times it feels hopeless, but if you keep hammering away at the same point, over and over again, eventually - if you’re lucky- you break through the most impervious of barriers. Never give up hope.
