Thursday, June 28, 2012

Charlie Taylor Behaviour Czar

Charlie Taylor is the Government 'Behaviour Czar' (who did he upset to receive such a daft title?) He met with the Education Select Committee yesterday and told them that:

"Some children are too disruptive to fit into regular school life"

Well goodness me, there's a revelation. 

Now you might imagine that his solution would be to send them to Borstal or something along those lines. but no, they must not be blamed or punished for their actions- instead he proposes that 'help and support' are what's needed. God save us.

It wasn't long before he degenerated into complete gibberish with such classics as:

"The trajectory of pupil behaviour is improving"

before describing some pupils' behaviour as 'challenging'. Why is it that nobody in charge can ever grit their teeth and actually say the word 'bad'?

Finally he reassured everyone by claiming that 'no-go areas where teachers fear to tread' are becoming rarer. This would be good news if we were discussing Helmand Province, but not so great when it is our own schools and the only cure suggested amounts to little more than a friendly chat over a nice cup of tea.

To be fair to Charlie he has come up with some sensible suggestions in the last year, such as telling parents not to keep their children off school for trivial reasons and proposing not paying child benefit to parents of kids who truant (I think he pinched both ideas from my book), but he needs to get a grip as far as pupil behaviour is concerned.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Truancy is good - anything that keeps chavs out of school is good for my son.
It helps make state schools more like private schools.

TonyF said...

"The trajectory of pupil behaviour is improving"


I thought corporal punishment wasn't allowed? Mind you, some of the little lovelies need a good launching..

Seeking Sir said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Seeking Sir said...

Can we please distinguish between:

1. Kids with genuine problems - alcoholic mum/criminal dad etc etc

and

2. Kids who are just idiots

Then can we:

1. Enforce the same behavioural standards rigorously for both

whilst, crucially:

2. Offering proper support to the former i.e. counselling, extra tuition etc etc.

Mr Chalk, I appreciate your glibness in general and largely concur with most of what you say. However, it would be foolish not to concede that 'help and support' are vital elements to many pupils' success.

Whilst we have many schools that are crap at sorting out behaviour (which, trust me, I find at least as infuriating as you do), we also have many that offer precious little support to 12 or 13 year old kids in genuine need.

The both need addressing and they should not, as you perhaps imply, be considered as oppositional, but as parts of the same whole.

That's not to say that Charlie Taylor is not another educationalist/political twonk, mind.

Anonymous said...

I'm with comment#1 - a village might be required to raise a child but it does involve a fairly equal contribution from each villager. If the locals are raising beasts, I fail to see why I or my well-brought-up children should be made to take to take the slack without pointing any fingers.

Macheath said...

Why is it that nobody in charge can ever grit their teeth and actually say the word 'bad'?

The trouble is that it's been going on far too long; several lectures on my PGCE course many years ago were devoted to ensuring we knew never to state, suggest or imply that a pupil was 'bad'.

We could, we were told, explain that the pupil's behaviour was unacceptable - in which case we were encouraged to look for reasons why this might be so and thus, crucially, invite the pupil to lay the blame elsewhere.

Anonymous said...

It is now obvious that school should be optional and therefore entirely supplied by the private sector. GASP.

Yes folks, it's failed hasn't it? Do you shop at state owned supermarkets? How's that state-made motor car doing? Please don't give me some tired argument about moral duty to educate our children (kids are small goats). Education has failed thanks to the nonsense of equality, socialism and the welfare state.

Children are in control now, and live by their rules. No wonder they have a hard drive crash when they try to enforce their rules when they begin work at the bottom (should they be given a job) in the nasty real world.

Iftikhar Ahmad said...

I have been engaged in Jihad in the field of education for the last forty years. I set up the first Muslim school in London in 1981 and now there are round about 170 schools and only 12 are state funded. Muslim children are not doing well in state schools because they have been mis- educated and de-educated at a wrong place at a wrong time. They need state funded Muslim schools with Muslim teachers as role models during their developmental periods.

They need to learn and be well versed in standard English to follow the National Curiculm and go for higher studies and research to serve humanity. At the same time they need to learn and be well versed in Arabic, Urdu and other community languages to keep in touch with their cultural heritage and enjoy the beauty of their literature and poetry. As far As English language is concerned, nobody is denying its value and focus should be on helping people learning English. Migrant community believes that an English language skill is key to ensuring equal access to services, opportunities and personal independence. The economic and social survival of bilingual Muslim community depends on English language but not at the cost of its mother tongue. It is a crime against humanity to deprive a community from its native tongue and cultural heritage. Muslim community is bilingual and does not believe in becoming monolingual Brits. Children that can speak more than one languages do better overall in learning and it will help them excel in a job when they are older. Only an idiot would think that being bi/trilingual is a bad thing. I think its great to be surrounded by foreign languages. There are plenty of benefits to learning them, it increases memory and other brain functions, looks great on a job résumé, and most importantly allows you to connect with a different culture and make new friends. Now is the time to teach them all the different languages you want to because they will just soak up the information. As we get older it becomes harder and harder to retrain our brains to learn a new language.

Tolerance in Britain is an illusion. The problem isn't immigrants not adapting to British culture, it's Brits showing much disrespect and scorn to those who are of any immigrant background. even if an immigrant was well versed in English, knew the customs etc. would they still get employment? No. Would Brits treat them as a decent human? No.

So why would they want to assimilate into a culture that is constantly tearing them down?

There are now four state funded Sikh schools and one state funded Hindu school in Harrow and next year a Hindu state funded Muslim schools would be set up in Leicester. Even black community is thinking of setting up its own schools with its own teachers because British schooling is the home of institutional racism.

I'm not sure how learning English will help stop extremism either, many of those who have carried out/plotted atrocities have been highly educated. Speaking English does not promote integration into British society, and broaden opportunities. English speaking Muslims still face discrimination in jobs, education and housing. English speaking Muslim youths are angry, frustrated and extremist, thanks to English language. English language is not only a lingua franca but also lingua frankensteinia. Human right also covers linguistic right. Cultural and linguistic genocide are very common. British schooling is murdering community languages like Arabic, Urdu and others. English is today the world killer language. Linguistic genocide is a crime against humanity and British schooling is guilty of committing this crime.

There are hundreds of state and church schools where Muslim children are in majority. In my opinion, all such schools may be opted out as Muslim Academies.
IA
http://www.londonschoolofislamics.org.uk

Crusader said...

Iftikhar why don't you just fuck right off.