Parents, schools passing the buck on discipline to doctors

As our teachers grapple to retain control of some of the world’s most disruptive classrooms, experts say issues of discipline are becoming increasingly medicalised.

Aussie parents and teachers need to do more to instil discipline in school students and stop pushing the burden of behaviour to the medical professions, says a leading child psychiatrist

As the nation’s teachers grapple to retain control of some of the world’s most disruptive classrooms, western Sydney psychiatrist and author Dr Tanveer Ahmed said issues of discipline are becoming increasingly medicalised.

“There’s a lurch to calling all difficult behaviours ‘disability’. One in four kids is labelled as having a disability, and that’s getting a bit ridiculous. It’s becoming too mainstream,” he said.

“There’s too much of an expectation on schools and teachers to sort out what are often wider social problems, and many of them – understandably – are going ‘this is too much’ and then trying to outsource it to my sector.”

Tanveer Ahmed, psychiatrist and author of Fragile Nation

Parents are often the biggest barrier to teachers implementing stricter policies on behaviour, Dr Ahmed said, especially in public schools. Meanwhile, discipline is “one of the single biggest factors” why non-government schools are becoming more popular.

Enrolments in independent schools alone have grown by 12.5 per cent since 2018, compared an increase of just 1.9 per cent in the public sector.

“(Parents) feel like teachers spend too much time on the troubled kid in the public system,” Dr Ahmed said. “We’re stigmatising anything that seems punitive … (but) trying to be overly caring and compassionate just ends up harming some of these kids.”

Katharine Birbalsingh aka “Britain’s strictest headmistress”. Picture: AFP

One in 25 students in NSW public schools were suspended at least once in 2021, the most recent year for which data is available, and 182 pupils expelled. The dire state of discipline in Australia, which is ranked 70th of 77 countries assessed by the OECD’s 2018 Program for International Student Assessment, has prompted a senate inquiry to examine the impacts on Aussie kids’ literacy and numeracy.

Centre for independent Studies education policy director Glenn Fahey said students who are already disadvantaged are the ones who face the worst consequences of poor discipline.

“We have some of the most disrupted and disorderly classrooms in the world, which means we lose significant teaching time towards managing that disruption,” he said.

“By the age of 15, children who are in more disruptive classrooms are around nine months behind their peers.”

UK school principal Katharine Birbalsingh, often branded Britain’s strictest headmistress, said Australian schools needed to be more strict. She bans chatter in the school corridors between lessons is forbidden and students can be given a detention if they fail to turn up with the right equipment.

“What that means is your more vulnerable kids, your more disadvantaged kids are kept on the boat, and they’re all sailing forward,” she said.