Expert calls for more classroom discipline

A British school ‘behaviour guru’ has called on Australia to beef up discipline to calm chaotic classrooms, and for teachers to show students basic manners.

British education expert Tom Bennett blamed universities for failing to educate teachers about classroom management.

A British school “behaviour guru” has called on Australia to beef up discipline to calm chaotic classrooms, and for teachers to show students basic manners.

Tom Bennett, the independent behaviour adviser for the UK Department of Education, said students’ misbehaviour is too often blamed on mental health issues.

“We often see that schools attempt to treat misbehaviour as some kind of pathology of a child’s mental state,’’ he told a senate inquiry into classroom disruption yesterday.

“For the vast majority of children, the poor behavioural choices they often make are habitual, or based on values, or based on an inadequate orientation in the school environment, or not clear enough school boundaries.

“If we treat all misbehaviour as some kind of deep-seated mental health trauma, then we’re looking at it with entirely the wrong lens.’’

Mr Bennett, who rewrote the official UK guidance for teacher training and school behaviour last year and is the author of the book The Behaviour Guru’, said all children learn better in calm classroom.

“The only people that flourish in chaos are predators and the opportunistic,’’ he said.

“The vulnerable, the weak and the fragile drown in these environments.’’

Federal Opposition education spokeswoman Sarah Henderson told the hearing that “classrooms are going off the rails’’.

“I learned of a year 12 English class where there was disruption and the teacher said to one of the students who wanted to learn, ‘Go down to the back of the classroom and put headphones on’,’’ she said.

Mr Bennett said well-meaning schools often felt it was enough to “have a chat with them to see what happens’’.

“That just doesn’t work with lots of kids,’’ he said.

“We cannot be concerned about racism, sexual and sexual harassment and violence and so on in schools, and then say children shouldn’t be allowed to be suspended or excluded,’’ he said.

“There are a minority of students who need to be removed from school and placed in … a behavioural school or special school.

“When you’re running a classroom, you don’t have time to be a child therapist.’’

UK behaviour guru Tom Bennett.

Mr Bennett said “the small minority’’ of students who need therapy or psychiatric treatment must be targeted with professional help.

He blamed universities for failing to train teachers in classroom management.

“What I’ve seen in both UK and Australian schools is that school teachers are all too often inadequately prepared in managing behaviour,’’ he said.

“The behaviour management is often seen as an afterthought, or worse, bad advice is given to teachers. The thought is that they’ll pick it up on the job as they go along, but that’s a terrible way to train anybody in a professional context.”

Australia’s universities will be forced to train teachers in classroom management from the end of 2025, under reforms ordered by the nation’s education ministers in August.

Rowdy classrooms are driving an exodus of teachers, as governments spend $10m on advertising to promote the profession.

Independent Schools Australia yesterday hosted a forum at Parliament House to discuss ways to re-engage Australia’s most at-risk students, through schools of “second chances’’.

Private schools have set up 96 “special assistance schools’’ to educate 13,100 students who have dropped out or been expelled from mainstream schools.

The Baptist-run Carinity schools have trained three therapy dogs to provide support and comfort to students.

Carinity Education Southside in Brisbane has trained a 12-month-old labrador to help teenage girls with a history of trauma.