Opinion: If NSW wants to hold on to good teachers in challenging public schools, reducing schools’ ability to act in the case of serious misbehaviour is not a good plan
Sarah Mitchell, the NSW Education Minister, is proposing brave reforms to behaviour policy that will affect government schools. They are brave because Mitchell must be aware of how they are likely to be received by teachers and, as the consequences start to filter through the system, by parents. No doubt Mitchell is making a principled stand for what she believes to be right and is prepared to weather the criticism. I respect that. However, these reforms are misguided.
Well, of course these problems are linked to suspensions, but you would have to ignore the most basic rule of statistics – that correlation is not causation – to assume suspension is the cause. Instead, it seems highly likely, for instance, that a student whose behaviour results in them being suspended from school is a student whose behaviour is more likely to bring them into contact with the youth justice system.
The fact is that differentiation just does not work very well and is not supported by a strong evidence base. Public school classes typically consist of 20 to 30 students with one teacher and perhaps a teacher’s aide. Students are being labelled at an ever-expanding rate with a range of disabilities and disorders, many of which are behavioural, such as oppositional defiant disorder. Differentiating to meet all these perceived needs becomes impractical and bureaucratic.
Because we should not forget that discipline problems and a lack of support with them are a key driver of teacher turnover. If NSW wants to hold on to good teachers in challenging public schools, reducing schools’ ability to act in the case of serious misbehaviour is not a good plan.
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