Think the sacked street sweeper case is bad? Here’s what’s happening in schools

The problem of token political statements goes deeper than even Melbourne’s most left-wing council, with naughty children now being asked to share in an acknowledgment of country.

On planet Earth, naughty kids need to be punished: swiftly, fairly, without acknowledgments of country or mindless mollycoddling talk that detracts from the mission of discipline. Picture: Kevin Farmer

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Pity the poor street sweeper who was sacked by Darebin City Council for objecting to an acknowledgment of country being given before a weekly toolbox meeting. At least a court this week found he was unfairly dismissed.

Alas, the problem of token political statements goes deeper than even Melbourne’s most left-wing council.

Page eight of the NSW Department of Education’s “suspension guide” for teachers says when a suspended student returns to school there must be a meeting with the student that should begin with an acknowledgment of country. Though this sort of token politics is only a fraction of what’s wrong with the public education system, it sure is a pointer of how mission creep is undermining education.

Consider the second item on the agenda according to the NSW Education Department’s 12-page formal suspension policy document. “Start the meeting off by talking about the student’s strengths. Everyone in the meeting should be able to identify some of the student’s strengths.”

Following that there should be a “re-teach moment, not a bring them down moment”, when the meeting finally turns to what the kid did wrong.

There is nothing wrong with talking to students about their strengths but disciplinary policies have become therapy sessions, and students know it.

Pity, then, the poor teacher whose chosen profession is to educate and equip a young generation with skills so students have the best shot at succeeding in the real world.

If bureaucrats who write this guff were working in classrooms in our public schools they might learn that discipline matters. On planet Earth, naughty kids need to be punished: swiftly, fairly, without acknowledgments of country or mindless mollycoddling talk that detracts from the mission of discipline.

Inquirer has spoken this week to public school teachers who are required to follow the departmental suspension policy. Terrific, hardworking, dedicated teachers working in both urban and regional public schools, in schools where discipline is not about checking the length of a hemline. It’s about safety.

But it’s not easy suspending a kid, even for behaving violently, in a public school. The process is so unwieldy, the paperwork is endless and administrative work so onerous that most kids who seriously misbehave get off scot-free.

It’s not enough that the classroom curriculum is cluttered with subject matter that distracts students from learning the basics. Basic skills such as writing have dropped, with educators this week putting it down to a 30-year policy failure. Education policy failures are on the rise elsewhere, too.

Education bureaucrats have, for example, created a maze of complex, misguided “suspension” plans that undermine the basic obligation of a school to discipline a student for bad behaviour and ensure a safe environment for other students to learn.

The NSW Education Department suspension policy directs teachers to prepare a “care continuum guide”, an “individual behaviour support plan”, a “student voice scaffold – behaviour response plan” and a “student tailored risk management plan” – not to mention following the suspension resolution meeting checklist that says kids returning to school after a suspension must attend a meeting that begins with acknowledgment of country and is followed by a discussion of their strengths.

The costs of bureaucratic mission creep are diabolic. Teachers are spending hours trying to jump through over hurdles to discipline a student. This means other students are losing out because a teacher’s time is time taken away from teaching in the classroom.

There is nothing wrong with talking to students about their strengths, but disciplinary policies have become therapy sessions, and students know it.

The offending student is not learning real-life lessons for bad behaviour. Bad behaviour is routinely going unpunished. And the net result is classrooms are growing more unsafe for students and teachers.

“The suspension policy doesn’t know what it wants to do and so therefore it’s not doing a good job of anything because the department claims that the suspension policy is not a punishment. That being suspended is not a punishment, it’s not a disciplinary measure. It’s purely a supportive measure,” says one public high school teacher. “Our core business is supposed to be educating students. And disciplining them is also teaching them what is and is not acceptable.”

The teacher is speaking to Inquirer anonymously because it is a breach of their employment contract if they publicly criticise the Education Department.

The teacher mentions a recent fracas to explain how education bureaucracy is undermining education.

Recently at one NSW high school, a senior school student punched another one in the stomach. The violence was caught on security cameras inside the school. The school suspended the kid. The student’s mother complained, claiming the other student had provoked her son sometime earlier. Her son hadn’t reported any earlier incident.

Still, a bureaucrat, who does not work in the school or know either child involved, stepped in to overturn, on a technicality, a suspension that involved direct, verified violence by one student against another on school grounds.

According to departmental guidelines, the head teacher investigating the incident should not have told the parent that her son would be suspended for hitting another kid. The head teacher should have said, according to the suspension policy, that they were “recommending” a suspension to the principal. On this basis, the suspension was overturned.

“If we can’t properly discipline them with a suspension that has clear consequences for their bad behaviour, then what are they learning?” says the teacher.

“If that kid punched someone outside of school, they might actually go to court and they might actually go to prison. A court isn’t going to say, oh the victim said something mean to you earlier in the day so it’s OK, you’re off the hook for punching him.”

Quite often what the student is being suspended for is violence, verbal abuse or harassment, things that are crimes in the real world. The core business of the classroom teacher is to prepare students for the real world and school is part of the real world. It’s not some imaginary little bubble.

The bureaucrats, says the experienced teacher, have lost sight of the mission of suspensions. Sometimes kids do need to be disciplined. Instead, bureaucrats are throwing all sorts of irrelevant things at bad behaviour, including an acknowledgment of country, and talking about a kid’s strengths.

Teachers are left frustrated, demoralised, facing personal abuse from students and concerned about the safety of their students. With teachers’ authority undermined, classroom management is made even more challenging. Suspension policies have become all but pointless for students who are frequent truants too.

Earlier this year, at another school, teachers were told that a suspension for a student who often refused to go to classes was no longer an option.

“Because this student refuses to change his behaviour, we’ve been told we can’t suspend him any more because suspension doesn’t work,” says a senior teacher at the school.

“But nothing else works either with this particular student. We have tried a daily check-in with a teacher he gets along with, we have had positive behaviour monitoring cards where this teenager gets a little smiley face stamp from his teachers for doing really basic things like showing up.

“We’ve done negative behaviour monitoring where we grade him on how he shows respect to others, which is usually poorly. We have tried a billion different things. We have even had a behaviour specialist come and observe him for a day so that she could try and give us some recommendations on what we could do.

There is an added bind for teachers. If the student is hiding out on school grounds – which this student is – the school system is liable if he is hurt by, say, a falling branch. That’s their duty of care to students on school grounds.

“So we’re expected to have staff members searching the grounds, reporting to front office for every class that this student doesn’t turn up. And he never turns up to class. It is a colossal waste of time.

“And because our time is a limited resource, every minute that teachers are following up on students who refuse to walk through the door, students who have turned up to class to learn are missing out.

“It’s really depressing because I really, really value public education. But ultimately it’s not a philosophical question. It about getting the right results for students. And our public schools are failing our kids. I don’t want my kid to fall those huge cracks that the bureaucracy is creating for kids.”

With their teachers’ authority undermined, classroom management is made even more challenging. Suspension policies have become all but pointless for students who are frequent truants too. Picture: Getty Images

This high school teacher is thinking of moving her own child, who attends a public school, to a private school where discipline is understood for what it is – a way to teach students consequences for their behaviour.

Mission creep on a local council is one thing. In the education system, meddling and misguided bureaucrats are not just failing to address the core mission of schools, they are undermining that core mission.

There is in education a direct relationship between the amount of bureaucratic involvement and the size and impact of the policy failure. The more bureaucrats, the more failures. When will the penny drop?

Remember, these public school teachers are breaching departmental codes of conduct if they speak publicly. Given the NSW Education Department is one of the country’s biggest employers, that’s a lot of silence about something so important.

If it takes a village to raise a kid, then the village needs, first and foremost, to include responsible parents. With schools trying to be everything to kids, they end up not even getting the basics right.