Disciplinary issues, truancy, special needs (to integrate or to separate) – some of the everyday problems which beset teachers in our schools, and that’s before you get to the administration, let alone actually start to teach!

Teachers are not necessarily equipped to be social workers, psychiatrists, or, heaven forbid, policemen, yet even the most damaged (in the widest sense of the word) children can be helped with the right care and attention – see www.kidsco.org.uk, the charity founded by Camila Batmanghelidjh in 1996.  Of course, such care and attention costs money, but in today’s climate, with disruptive pupils in particular, it is exclusion that sometimes seems as though it is becoming the weapon of first, not last, resort. 

Such – neglect? - however can be an expensive solution – expensive in human terms, because it can lead to semi-literate adults with significant unemployment issues, perhaps even drug abuse and criminality, but expensive too in cash terms, because of the opportunity cost to the economy as well as the additional costs to the public purse in terms of the justice and health systems. 

I often recall being told, during the last major recession, by a senior police officer that they believed that if you cut the Youth Service budget by £1, down the line you would need to spend £5 on the police and justice system. Well, Youth Service funding was decimated, and I’ll leave it to the reader to decide whether the policeman’s estimate was accurate.

Back in the classroom however, the problem does actually have to be solved, because children have a right to an education  and  the many good teachers  have a right to teach without fear of  disruption being part of their daily lives.     

Maureen Juniper

360 Education