Discipline in Schools (Hansard, 1 November 1994)

§ 13. Mr. Evennett
To ask the Secretary of State for Education what steps she is taking to improve the levels of discipline in schools.

§ Mr. Forth
In May, guidance on pupil behaviour and discipline was sent to all schools as part of the "Pupils with Problems" pack. The guidance aims to help schools to maintain and improve discipline. In September, the Department published an anti-bullying pack to help schools combat bullying.

§ Mr. Evennett
I congratulate my hon. Friend and the Department on their work on discipline in schools. We are all aware of the few well-publicised schools which have discipline problems, but can my hon. Friend confirm that the last Ofsted report showed that most schools did not have a discipline problem and that most pupils in the state sector were well behaved?

§ Mr. Forth
It is important to get this matter in context and to understand that throughout the country teachers are doing an excellent job in maintaining classroom discipline. In most classrooms, in most schools, for most of the time, there is an orderly atmosphere and pupils are learning. However, undoubtedly there is a very small number of difficult pupils. We want to work with teachers to ensure that they have available to them all reasonable means of dealing with disciplinary problems. Very often the key to that is parents. My appeal is for parents to support teachers, governors and heads of schools in maintaining proper discipline. Without parental support, the job is much more difficult.

§ Mrs. Helen Jackson
Will the Minister today recognise something that every teacher in this country recognises—that there is a link between the unacceptable rise in the numbers in school classes, in both primary and secondary schools, and both the quality of education and 1343 the discipline maintained? Does he agree that there needs to be a limit on class sizes, especially in primary schools, to enable quality and discipline to be maintained?

§ Mr. Forth
No, I know of no such link. If the hon. Lady thinks that, simply by repeating it often enough she will make it come true, she is sadly mistaken. If she can produce any evidence of a causal connection between classroom sizes and discipline problems, I shall be happy to consider it, but no such evidence has yet come to my attention.

§ Mr. Hawkins
On the subject of discipline in classrooms, did my hon. Friend have the opportunity at the weekend to see the excellent article by The Sunday Telegraph education correspondent, Mr. Jonathan Petre, reporting on a visit that he and some secondary school heads had made to Japanese schools which had high numbers in the classroom but high standards of discipline? Does he not feel that it was a counsel of despair for some of the heads on that visit to say that they did not feel that it was possible to emulate the high standards of discipline in Japanese classrooms in their own schools? If my hon. Friend has not seen that article, will he consider it carefully, as there are lessons to be learned there for British schools?

§ Mr. Forth
Of course we should always be conscious of experience in other countries, but quite how far Japanese experience is directly transferable to Britain is an interesting matter on which I would wish to ponder. However, I agree that it is depressing if people in the responsible position that head teachers undoubtedly have, when given the opportunity to see some sort of international comparison of this kind, are reluctant to accept the lessons that may be there to be learnt. I hope that they will think again, just as I am prepared to consider the example that my hon. Friend has given.

§ Mr. Blunkett
Does the Minister agree that discipline is crucial to an acceptable learning environment, but that pastoral care in schools and special support, including with the family, are much more important than the Group 4 approach to school discipline, which has resulted in 8,000 pupils being excluded from our schools, many of them grant-maintained schools, during the past year?

§ Mr. Forth
I join my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in welcoming the hon. Gentleman to his new responsibilities on the Opposition Front Bench. When he has had a little more time, he may like to study the figures somewhat more carefully, when he will see that they are not as they first appear. A lot of nonsense is being talked at the moment about the nature of exclusions. We must distinguish between permanent and temporary—or limited—exclusions. We must also be careful not to extrapolate a small sample to a national level. However, I share the hon. Gentleman's concern in this area. We want to consider carefully the whole matter of exclusions, who is carrying them out and why and the general background to them. I hope that we shall be able to find the right answers to support our heads and teachers in the difficult job that they are doing.