Pupil Disaffection in Schools

Bad Boys and Hard Girls

Sarah Swann

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317073178
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Sarah Swann provides a fresh approach to examining the long-standing debates over disaffection, and in particular social class differences in educational achievement, through a mixed methods methodology and the showcasing of new research. By observing pupils as they engage with peers and teachers in school, Swann allows disaffection to be seen and heard in 'real' events which constructs disaffection differently from objective statistical evidence on school exclusions. Rather than a homogenous identity, this book illustrates disaffection as layered and resting on a series of issues located on the crossroads between the cultural context of the neighbourhood and the public sphere of the school. It plots in a detailed way how these structures interact and mesh to create disaffected identities. Disaffection does not emerge in a vacuum, or without a cause. Pupils arrive at school with a wide variety of experiences and it is from these that they interpret, understand and act out their identities. Whilst the study in part seeks to describe and understand the social world of the school in terms of the pupils' interpretations of the situation, it analytically frames the perceptions of pupils within a wider social context. In particular it focuses on the relationships between schooling and the wider macro structures and social relations that underpin disaffection. This approach makes the research both critical and interpretative and also able to shed new light on educational policy across England based on an understanding of the role of disaffection.

Chapter 1
Knots and Tangles in Secondary Schools

Disaffection has become a fashionable word in the world of education. It is a term which has frequently been used in the field of education, both by policy makers and practitioners and also wider advising on gloomy social realities of young people with no qualifications, no jobs and no futures. What do we actually mean when we talk of pupil disaffection and poor standards of pupil behaviour in school today? Is it those educationally apathetic pupils sitting at the back of the class playing music on their phones, chatting on MSN and swapping Facebook updates? Is it about swearing, verbal abuse, chair-chucking boys, belligerent girls, confrontational pupils ‘owning’ the school corridors and acting ‘hard’ or simply youthful high jinks? Or does the term encompass all of these? Although much talk at the chalk face is laced with stark references to ‘pupil engagement’, ‘learning outcomes’, ‘progress indicators’ and ‘levels of progress’, these are nought but witless witterings unless we confront the root causes of poor behavior.

In highlighting the experiences of disaffected pupils the book is still looking at a minority of pupils, or what Booth (1987: ix) has termed ‘the marginal esoteric’. In other words, it is important to remember that the majority of pupils behave well most of the time. Nonetheless disaffected pupils are a formidable presence in the classroom, a fact which has not gone unrecognised. Sue Cowley’s (2001, 2003, 2006, 2010) book ‘Getting the Buggers to Behave’ is now in its fourth edition. The true nature and level of disruptive behaviour in schools remains a mystery which is an issue recognised by the House of Commons Education Committee (2011). ‘Data currently collected by the Department does not fully represent the nature of behaviour in schools- good or bad- and the impact of that behaviour upon staff, pupils, parents and carers’ (House of Commons Education Committee, 2011: 3).

This is not the first research to highlight discipline problems in English schools and it is unlikely to be the last. Pupil disaffection is, to varying degrees, a concern in every single secondary school. Some 160 years ago this book might have been called ‘Larrikens and Loud Street Girls: the ‘Fearful and Growing Prevalence of Juvenile Depravity’. The language has changed but the great riddle of education remains unchanged: how to deal with the daily grind of disruptive pupil behaviour. It is blatantly clear that concern with pupil behaviour remains a major theme in teacher’s everyday professional practice. Consider the following ‘typical’ real world examples of behaviour reports from Northern inner city secondary schools:

[Josh showed] no effort, constantly talking over teacher, ignoring staff, eating sweets. Walked around room giving post-it notes with rude messages on to other pupils.

Leanne called John Wilson a ‘fat cunt’. Walked out of door – we were watching Hamlet and shouted ‘I am going to hammer you all, you fucking dickheads’. I am sick of these outbursts that disrupt our lessons.

Melissa’s behaviour in Science yesterday (periods 5 and 6) was very poor and extremely disruptive. I followed all the school procedures in order to manage her behaviour; she refused to comply with instructions. She was: eating, listening to music, shouting out, wandering in/out of class. When I sent for on call she was stood outside. On call did not arrive during the lesson (45 mins). During this time Melissa repeatedly hit the emergency electricity/gas button whilst the class were doing practical work. Very disruptive and frustrating for the other students. What’s the next step please?

Jodie called out to Ranjita ‘do you shave your beaver?’ R. looked very upset. Jodie asked Clare as well, then Eamon said ‘can’t even cut her hair’. Jodie then asked me the same question which was out of order. She asked to have the referral worked off but then said ‘I’m shittin’ me boots’.

Jack has admitted to being the person responsible for throwing the pen that hit Joseph in the right eye (Hospital referral req’d- puncture and bleed). NOT THROWN IN MALICE.

It is however a façade to state that the problems are exactly the same in all schools. The observation of behaviour has been described as a ‘prism – multifaceted and colourful’ (Fassnacht, 1982: v), a phrase which perfectly encapsulates the variety of pupil behaviours demonstrated above. We also see from the last example where the pen was ‘not thrown in malice’ that what its definition is also hinges on individual teacher judgment.

By virtue of its variety and complexity, it is impossible to generalise about the thousands of disaffected young people in English secondary schools today on the basis of the small samples this book uses as its focus. Even if the sample included 1,000 pupils, the findings could never offer absolute truth because disaffection is never absolute. It is always provisional, always being made and always being changed. Peacock (1986: 96) states, ‘comparison is impossible because nothing is comparable. Each way of life, like each snowflake and each fingerprint, is unique – incomparable’. However, Kluckhohn and Murray’s (1948/1953: 53) observation that, ‘every man is in certain respects a) like all other men, b) like some other man, c) like no other man’, serves as reminder of the conceptual value of this research. While it may be true that the classic experiment idealised in the natural sciences is not feasible in social research, straightforward observation is instructive in highlighting some of the knots and tangles in secondary schools. In James Kelman’s novel A Disaffection, frustrated teacher Patrick Doyle’s assertion ‘I just tell the bloody truth, as I see it’ (1989: 112) goes to the heart of showing things as they are without belittling or endorsing the issues around poor pupil behaviour.

So what are some of the issues? At macro level fewer than 50 per cent of those who begin teacher training are teaching after five years. After workload, ‘poor standards of pupil behaviour – general indiscipline, violent behaviour and verbal abuse’ was cited as a major factor in decisions to leave the profession altogether (House of Commons Education and Skills Committee, 2004: 4). The evidence shows behavioural problems to be of greater concern in schools with lower than average GCSE results and higher than average numbers of pupils on free school meals (FSM). Smithers and Robinson’s (2005) study showed that of the full-time permanent resignations, teachers were most likely to leave to work in other schools, rather than quit the profession altogether. This suggests dissatisfaction with the specific nature of inner city teaching rather than with the job per se. Smithers and Robinson, 2001) The main issue remains low-level but persistent disruption. Over 20 years ago the Elton Report (1989: 61–2) found that for many teachers, ‘… the flow of their lessons had been impeded or disrupted by having to deal with minor discipline problems …’. This was defined as pupils ‘talking out of turn’, ‘hindering other pupils’, ‘making unnecessary (non-verbal) noise’ and ‘calculated idleness or work avoidance’. ‘Showing lack of concern for others’, ‘unruliness while waiting’ and ‘running in the corridors’ were the most frequently mentioned forms of bad behaviour encountered during the course of teachers’ duties round the school. The Elton Report’s (1989: 29) conclusion was that, ‘… reducing bad behaviour is a realistic aim. Eliminating it completely is not’.

Responsible for inspecting schools and reporting on their strengths and weaknesses, the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted) take a very functional view of schooling, ‘The most important role of teaching is to raise pupils’ achievement’ (Ofsted, 2012: 15) and the quality of a lesson is measured by its impact on pupils’ progress and what it enables pupils to achieve. This, however, assumes that every child arrives into the classroom wanting to learn. Teachers who can keep order are ‘successful’ at doing their job. On this Dubberley (1993: 79) states:

If a teacher is too soft, he cannot control the class. If he cannot control the class he cannot teach them anything; and if he cannot teach, it is legitimate to ‘rubbish’ him, for he is not doing his job. There is no room for sympathy.

While a distinction is made here between the task of teaching and the task of behaviour management, Docking (1980) argued 30 years ago that discipline is an integral part of teaching and cannot easily be separated from the teacher’s main purpose of enabling pupils to learn. Frustratingly this remains a crucially important topic concerning policy makers, ‘The quality of learning, teaching and behaviour in schools are inseparable issues … Poor behaviour cannot be tolerated as it is a denial of the right of pupils to learn and teachers to teach’ (DCSF, 2005: 2). Whichever way it is defined however, there is indeed no room for sympathy which can be seen in the way teachers working in challenging circumstances are branded flailing and ‘failing’ (Frean, 2008) and ‘incompetent’(Wragg, Haynes, Wragg and Chamberlin, 1999). Allegedly ‘Teachers don’t know what stress is’ (Shepherd, 2012). Rather than being punished, ‘inept’ teachers are to be ‘recycled’ (Maddern, 2011) In speaking of the same situation in America over 20 years’ ago, Bridges (1986: 31) dubbed the redeployment of such teachers to other schools ‘the turkey trot’ or ‘the dance of the lemons’ but whether it is useful to blame teachers for the behaviour problems of inner city schools has to be questioned.

Teachers working in difficult schools learn to adapt to the challenges posed by adopting an attitude of resiliency in a way that is not needed for their counterparts in middle class schools. Of schooling in America, McClaren (2007: 90) reflects that the boasts of the staff overheard at lunchtime in middle class schools emphasised pupils’ academic abilities, ‘One girl in my eight grade class is already working on quantum physics’, ‘I have a student who will be the next Emily Carr’, whereas the bragging of inner-city teachers was of a very different nature:

‘Three kids in my class have been to court this year for vandalism’

‘One of the girls was so hard to handle it took three of us, including Fred’

‘Two of my students shot at each other with .22s from the balconies of their apartments, and they say they’ll shoot me if I hassle them’

They often painted the most dismal picture possible of their students, competing over who had the toughest kids, the worst problems; it was their badge of courage. (McClaren, 2007: 90)

Certainly, for every teacher in every secondary school certain faces stand out, ‘a class itself appears as a constellation of a few disruptive pupils against a background of conformity’ (Waller, 1932: 160). One reason is undermining or subverting behaviours which teachers find challenging. One teacher in Mac an Ghaill’s (1994: 38) study describes the ‘desperation’ she feels in teaching a low set year 10 group and Wittrock (1986: 409) likens pupil behaviour to ‘a pack of hungry and half-starved wolves’. Waller (1932: 166–7) was ‘frightened’ as ‘all the faces seemed to have an evil look upon them, and every youngster there seemed determined to torment me if he could’. When ‘derisive hoots from anonymous sources in the back of the room’ escalated into inkwells being thrown he reports that he became ‘so desperate, so angry that I nearly cried’. Interviews with teachers indicated that ‘while teachers are dealing with these problems as a matter of routine, their cumulative effects are wearing and contribute to a sense of stress and growing frustration’ (Elton 1989: 62).

Discussions of behaviour are woven into the fabric of everyday staffroom comments, ‘Pupils are aware of their rights but without any responsibility’; ‘If School X is Beirut then School Y is like Basra on a Friday night’. Typical conversations with inner city teachers outside of the school gates typically begin with a defensive statement, ‘I do love teaching. I really do but …’ and ‘The holidays are fantastic, but …’ and the ‘buts’ are followed, inevitably, by complaints about poor behaviour, fire-fighting and feelings of helplessness and humiliation. Apple (2001: 3) expresses how he was ‘constantly drained by the demands, the bureaucratic rules, the daily lessons that bounced off kids’ armour’ and McClaren (2007: 101) describes his change from a ‘relatively even-tempered and reasonably patient person into a mass of raw nerve endings and brute instinct’. Indeed many teachers seem to view the control they exercise over pupils as tenuous, as one internet blog shows:

… I can’t stand the disgusting behaviour of many of the pupils … I went into teaching because I basically like children and also wanted to help ‘deprived’ children to get a good education and hence have better chances in life. I have been doing this job for nearly 20 years, but it has become so bad that I cannot stand it anymore. In the past couple of years I have been increasingly verbally abused, insulted, ignored and sneered at. So have my colleagues. More and more pupils want a free ride and are not prepared to do any real work. Neither are they prepared to listen. … all secondary schools which are experiencing problems with behaviour and attitude should be divided into two, with one half for the anti-social pupils, who would be kept in line by ex-army types supporting the teachers and the other half for kids who want to learn. When the thugs behave in a more acceptable manner, they can go back into the ‘nice’ half of the school. If they don’t, they have to go back to the square-bashing half. (Annaliza, 2007)

The images created here are reminiscent of a scene from the Bash Street Kids (1979: 4–5) where Teacher¸ having tired of unruly pupil antics, presents his class with new desks where pupils are ensconced with holes for securing their legs; a ‘clamp for holding hand in writing position’; a ‘continual flow of ink’ and the teacher’s voice instructing in a compliant (albeit resentful) atmosphere.

For the past hundred years or so, the internal structure and organisation of English secondary schools have remained stable in that they are hierarchical organisations which are structured along the lines of authority and control. Each person occupies a role, involving a particular set of functions and responsibilities performed by the person for the benefit of the school as a whole. This can be seen in the top down management structure where hierarchical relations of power run from a ‘set of job boxes coordinated to execute the work of the school which the head manages through a formal system of procedures’ (Hargreaves, 1994: 48). Behaviour changes to fit the expectations required of that role. The Elton Report (1989 para 1/57) states:

Every organisation depends on people behaving in certain ways to achieve its purposes. Companies cannot achieve good results without cooperative effort. Neither can schools. A school’s central purpose is that children should learn. Good behaviour makes effective teaching and learning possible. Bad behaviour disrupts these processes.

To various degrees all schools impart some form of social role in relation to their pupils. By virtue of its purposes and procedures, schooling is inescapably committed to transcend the interests of the individual for the greater good of ensuring that children’s behaviour is consistent with general societal expectations so that they make a positive contribution to society overall. As Alexander (1973: 149) has pointed out:

A society without rules is inconceivable, and rules without some attitude of disapproval towards breaking them are inconceivable … Anyone who seeks to change a society rather than to abolish society altogether must be aiming at something with some rules, however exiguous.

The academic literature indicates that schooling is a civilising force of ‘moral regulation’ (Mac an Ghaill, 1994: 44) which inducts pupils into the norms valued by wider society:

[Pupils] start off in the position of the barbarian outside the gates. The problem is to get them inside the citadel of civilisation so that they will understand and love what they see when they get there. (Peters, 1965: 107)

[Through schooling] we attempt to try to get children to accept certain values, to aspire to certain futures for themselves. Education structures are used not just to impose certain sorts of behaviour but to construct people in certain ways … we insist that they come to see themselves and organise themselves in these ways. (Furlong, 1991: 297)

Officially school is geared to pupils to achieve their full potential and prepare them for adult life in their community but it has long being recognised that managing the business of pupil behaviour is a precarious task. Waller (1932: 22) describes school as:

… a despotism in a state of perilous equilibrium … a despotism threatened from within and exposed to regulation and interference from without. It is a despotism capable of being overturned in a moment, exposed to the instant loss of its stability and its prestige. It is a despotism demanded by the community of parents … It is a despotism resting upon children …

The overall images constructed are of ‘Surviving’ (Colbert and Wolff, 1992). Fulfilling this task in inner city schools may give cause for self-congratulation but not all teachers are able to adapt and make the same change which is a common theme, running through discussion rooms and blogs on the internet. An extreme example reads:

In England teachers are miserable.
In England, teachers feel like rubbish.
In England, teachers go on stress leave.
In England, teachers want to quit teaching.
In England, teachers kill themselves. (Hutton, 2007a)

In England, the students control the classrooms.
In England, the inmates run the asylum.
In England, teachers are falsely accused of physical and sexual abuse.
In England, schools give teachers bad references. (Hutton, 2007b)

The words speak for themselves.

Pupil Behaviour and Newspaper Discourse

Newspaper texts deserve a brief note since they aim to document, but also construct, ‘out of control’ pupil behaviour in particular ways. This is significant because ‘… pictures and words, images and symbols, the array of materials by which we form our communication, fix our memories and shape our realities’ (Lester and Ross, 2003: 1). Newspapers employ two organising themes to construct behavioural problems in school: doom and gloom forecasts of the child who is a grave social concern on the one hand, and the much-lauded child, engaging in harmless youthful high jinks, on the other.

The former lies on the continuum between the sensational and the pessimistic. Sensational accounts of violent incidents in school ‘inflame anxieties’ (Miller, 2003: 10) by giving the impression that secondary schools in England are on the brink of a serious crisis in maintaining discipline and order in classrooms. In 2005 Shanni Naylor needed 30 stitches in her face after an assault during an English lesson at Myrtle Springs School in Sheffield. It is thought the attacker used a blade from a pencil sharpener to slash her victim. In the same year at Newfield School, also in Sheffield, 20 children, all about 12, had to be taken to hospital to be vaccinated against Hepatitus B after one pupil jabbed them with a hypodermic needle (The Sheffield Telegraph, 13 February 2005).

Newspaper reports are also responsible for ‘the relentless bombardment of criticism and bad news’ (Miller, 2003: 9) and this pessimistic outlook is seen regularly every year from newspapers of every political persuasion: ‘Pupils’ behaviour has worsened, say teachers’ (The Daily Mail, 6 April 2009); ‘Children’s behaviour at school deteriorating …’ (The Guardian, 18 April 2011); ‘Violent young pupils unfit for school, behaviour tsar says’ (The Telegraph, 27 June 2012). As well as public concern about the number of weapons appearing in school, some media reports focus on teachers’ own lack of faith in the profession:

Staff at a school in Lancashire were reduced to a walkout over pupil indiscipline. Teachers at a Lancashire comprehensive who walked out over the unruly behaviour of their pupils have threatened one-hour strikes unless their headteacher helps them restore discipline. Seventy of the 80 staff at Darwen Vale high school did not turn up to take lessons, saying students are out of control, pushing them, challenging them to fights, and threatening to film their ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Knots and Tangles in Secondary Schools
• 2 A History of Pupil Disaffection
• 3 Structure of the Education System in England
• 4 ‘Muddy Boots’ and ‘Grubby Hands’
• 5 Disaffected Spaces and Geographies of Segregation
• 6 Male Disaffection: ‘Bad Boys’, ‘Hard’ Images and the Culture of Laddism
• 7 The Everyday Meaning and Experience of Disaffection
• 8 ‘Are yer daft?’ or ‘sick int ‘ead?’
• 9 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index