Schools

Academies, religion & schools, class sizes, remodelling, testing and tables, ...

The SRE we have and the SRE we need

Feminist Fightback is conducting research about Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) and the effects of changing political structures on women’s reproductive services and SRE resources. This text is taken from a recent leaflet. It was clear from discussions of our experiences that provision was patchy — people got different amounts of SRE at different levels. All of us felt we were missing the same things: discussion of sexuality; relationships; non-reproductive, nonheterosexual sex; self-pleasure; and, in some cases, any discussion of sex outside marriage. The neglect of pleasure in SRE, or...

Schools without punishment

By Martin Thomas Some readers have found Jayne Edwards’ opposition to punishment in schools ( Solidarity 220) naive and unrealistic. Yet, in Queensland, Australia, many of the most stressed schools use a student discipline scheme which explicitly rejects all punishment. It does not abolish the dolours of capitalism and poverty, and it is far from perfect, but in my experience (across dozens of state high schools in and around Brisbane) it works better than punishment-based systems. If students disrupt classes, the teacher (using a prescribed script) asks them what they are doing, what the rule...

No punishment in schools

By Jayne Edwards I agree with Cathy Nugent ( Solidarity 219) that children need rules, just as adults — ones that make sense and that are logical. However, if it is not reasonable to reduce adults to tears and frighten them it is not with children, who are more vulnerable; yet with children that approach is considered fine. My argument is children shouldn’t be subjected to threats and punishment. Young primary school children are at their most upset and frightened when they think they are in trouble. The thing they have done is nearly always a misunderstanding or trivial — but what overwhelms...

Rules can help children

By Cathy Nugent Although I agree with the basic argument Jayne Edwards makes ( Solidarity 219) — that using patience, sympathy and reasoning is the best way to help a child develop self-control, self-esteem and a “moral” viewpoint — I think she misses some points and overstates her case. 1. It is my experience (which is admittedly not vast) that primary school teachers want to be rational and sympathetic with children. That is not the picture Jayne paints. But the fact that teachers cannot always be responsive to individual children’s needs must be less to do with approaches to teaching and...

Children: no more threats and punishments

By Jayne Edwards I am a midday assistant at a primary school. The observations I have made in my job have confirmed what I think about how children are treated by all those who have authority over them — teachers, teaching assistants and the midday staff. Control of children is maintained by the threat of something bad happening to them — get sent to the head, call in parents, low scale public humiliation or just shouting to reduce them to tears. Even “good” teachers demand this kind of conformity. Children who are considered bad or naughty are always in trouble and it is these same ones how...

Riots: how are schools to blame?

As commentators wring their hands with anguish at terrible kids who have “lost their moral compass”, once again schools — including a lack of discipline in schools — are getting the blame. This misses the point... again. The incredible work being done in schools, by very dedicated people, is being done despite the education system, rather than because of it. Teaching Assistants and Learning Mentors (like myself) spend a lot of their time not assisting in the academic learning but in trying to convince the kids they work with that they are not the “crap” or “losers” or “failures” or any other...

Crown Woods: death of a comprehensive

In the early 1980s, Crown Woods School was London’s largest comprehensive. It had a thriving Sixth Form. It had a ‘farm’ which students tended, and a Rural Studies course. It had a ham radio set-up. Unusually for a state school, it even had a boarding wing. Over two thousand students were on the school’s roll. They came from a wide area of South-East London, and spoke between them several dozen different languages. But the students of the class of 1981 could have been no more apprehensive walking through the school’s entrance-foyer to start the school year than I was. Crown Woods was my first...

Teachers' strike against cuts in Forest Hill: solid

Teachers at Forest Hill School, a boys' comprehensive between Forest Hill and Sydenham, in South London, struck against job cuts on 23 June. The school's 50-plus NUT members were on strike because management have issued a redundancy notice to an English teacher, Adrian Stimpson. The school was closed but about 25 NUT members held a protest outside in the morning. Adrian told us: "The school has a budget deficit not because of too many kids or incompetent teachers but because of massive overspending on a PFI project for a new school building. Last year they tried to make job cuts, though in the...

Sex in the Big Society

Contrary to popular belief, the schools of Eton and St Paul’s, where members of our current Tory cabinet acquired their top-notch educations, were not rife with fagging, or even shagging. In fact, the whole Conservative lot, Nadine Dorries and Anne Milton included, abstained from sex entirely until they were well settled within the confines of marriage. Once there, they performed the ritual act a mere two or three times, to ensure children were conceived, and contraceptives (which they were happy to learn nothing about) were not used. But how, you’re almost certainly asking yourselves, do they...

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