DEPARTMENT FOR
CHILDREN, SCHOOLS AND FAMILIES News Release (2008/0058) issued by
The Government News Network on 26 March 2008
- ALL SCHOOLS TO
JOIN BEHAVIOUR PARTNERSHIPS - STEP CHANGE PLANNED FOR PUPIL
REFERRAL UNITS -
Ed Balls today accepted recommendations from a top behaviour
expert that all secondary schools should join behaviour
partnerships and announced new plans for a White Paper to
transform the alternative provision for pupils who have been
excluded from school and announced plans to tackle cyber bullying
of teachers.
Speaking at the annual NASUWT conference in Birmingham he
welcomed the initial report from Sir Alan Steer - which praised
the progress made by Government and schools to tackle behaviour -
but warned more needed to be done to see good behaviour in all
secondary schools.
In the Children's Plan published last December Ed Balls,
Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, asked Sir
Alan to review progress since he advised Government on a range of
tough measure to address bad behaviour in 2005.
As a result of legislation passed since the 2005 Report of the
Practitioners' Group on School Behaviour and Discipline,
schools now have:
* statutory power to discipline children and impose sanctions for
breaches of school rules;
* statutory power to confiscate;
* statutory power to impose discipline beyond the school site,
for example for bad behaviour on the journey to and from school;
* a completely new power to search pupils for weapons including knives;
* statutory power to use physical force to restrain unruly
pupils; and
* new rules on exclusion appeals panels.
In his initial report - published today - Sir Alan looks at the
many complex issues that can affect behaviour in and out of
school. Some of these he will consider in depth over the next few
months as he works towards his final report, including the role of
learning and teaching policies and looking at the right balance of
parental responsibilities and school powers.
However, following Sir Alan's latest advice, there are three
areas where Ed Balls now plans to go further. These are:
* accepting Sir Alan's advice that all schools, including
all new academies, should be required to be part of behaviour
partnerships - all existing academies have also now agreed to be
part of behaviour partnerships;
* plans to write to all Directors of Children's Services to
make sure that the additional £109.5 million for Parent Support
Advisers is targeted at schools with the highest need; and
* plans for a White Paper to see a transformation in the quality
of alternative provision, including plans for more voluntary and
private sector provision such as high quality vocational training
and studio schools.
Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, said:
"We know that standards of behaviour continue to be a matter
of concern for parents and teachers, as well as children and young
people themselves. Sir Alan's assessment is that we have made
considerable progress in implementing his recommendations, and
there has been wide take up by schools of the good practice advice
that Sir Alan and a group of his fellow practitioners produced in
2005. I am pleased with this, and am clear we are prepared to go
further so behaviour is good in all schools.
"Sir Alan's report reflects Ofsted's finding that
the number of schools with inadequate behaviour is at the lowest
level ever recorded. This is a tribute to the hard work of school
staff in maintaining good discipline. But it is a tough job
dealing both with general low level disruption in the classroom
and with the challenges presented by a minority of badly behaved
pupils. Schools require support: from each other; from the
specialist services in their local authority such as educational
psychologists and youth workers - and above all from parents.
"Sir Alan's 2005 report recommended all secondary
schools should work in partnerships to manage poor behaviour so
that clusters of schools in a local area could pool their
resources and expertise to deal with problem pupils and by
intervening early could prevent young people going off the rails.
"Virtually all secondary schools - 97 per cent - are working
in these partnerships. But as Sir Alan says, just a few schools
not co-operating in an area can undermine the effectiveness of
partnerships and so I accept Sir Alan's advice that all
schools should be required to be in these partnerships, and I
intend to legislate on this at the earliest opportunity.
"New academies will be required to join partnerships and I
can confirm that all open academies have now agreed to be part of
local behaviour partnerships. As well as taking these steps to
ensure that behaviour partnerships are universal, I am asking Sir
Alan in the next stage of his review to look in more depth at the
operation of school partnerships to identify what works best and
how to get that good practice adopted across the whole country.
"A key objective of behaviour partnerships is early
intervention - to identify children at risk of exclusion or
truancy and to intervene before the problem gets too bad.
Effective early intervention and the development of high quality
alternatives to mainstream school - where some pupils will spend
only a short period of time - is the right way to help young
people get back on track. Where pupils are so disruptive that they
have to leave the mainstream sector, it's important that they
get support that puts them back on track."
Mr Balls also told NASUWT that he was determined to improve the
quality of pupil referral units where excluded young people are
referred when they are excluded or before they are placed in a new school.
He said:
"Many of the children in alternative provision such as Pupil
Referral Units are amongst the most vulnerable in our society. 80
per cent of them have special educational needs. These children
have very poor outcomes, and at the same time often cause serious
disruption for their classmates and their communities. They often
need specialist help to address the underlying problems they face.
I am determined to shine a light on this part of the education
sector and ensure these young people get the high quality services
they need.
"There are many PRUs doing a good job in difficult
circumstances, but the overall quality of our alternative
provision is not good enough. My department is therefore working
up proposals for a step change in the quality of alternative
provision, and we will publish a White Paper the summer.
"Just as we have strengthened accountability for mainstream
schools over the past ten years, we will now for the first time
publish detailed data on pupil performance for this sector. We
will strengthen our powers to intervene when PRUs fail, encourage
more voluntary and private sector provision, and will launch
pilots to develop new and more effective forms of alternative
provision including high quality vocational training with a clear
pathway to qualifications and a job. This will include places for
pupils who would have gone to a PRU at new Studio Schools.
"Finally, good engagement with parents is critical to
helping schools maintain good discipline. Sir Alan has welcomed
the development of Parent Support Advisers who can offer advice
with parenting, and provide support for parents and their children
at the first sign of any social, health or behavioural problems.
Sir Alan now recommends the additional £109.5 m we are investing
in Parent Support Advisers over the next three years should be
targeted at schools with the highest level of need and that
examples of good practice, including those emerging from the two
year pilot, are widely disseminated to inform future policy and practice.
"I think these recommendations make sense and we will be
following up on them with local authorities. As a first step Kevin
Brennan will write to Directors of Children's Services, and I
want to hear from local authorities how they intend to use Parent
Support Advisers at our conference next month. I have also asked
Sir Alan to give further thought in the next stage of his review
to how we can reinforce parents' responsibility for their
children's behaviour, building on the measures - parental
orders and contracts, re-integration interviews - that we have
already introduced in response to Sir Alan's 2005 report.
"I am also looking forward to Sir Alan's advice in the
next stage of his review on other issues in his interim report
including exploring good practice for schools in dealing with
children with Special Educational Needs related behavioural
difficulties. I welcome Sir Alan's intention to look further
at ways of promoting consistency of practice in learning and
teaching given the clear links between the application of
consistent good practice in teaching and learning and behaviour."
He also announced new plans to protect teachers from
cyberbullying and said he had asked the Cyberbullying Taskforce -
who until now have focussed mainly on the impact of cyberbullying
on children - to look at what measures can be introduced to
protect teachers.
The Task Force, which will be chaired by Kevin Brennan and will
have representatives from social networking sites and teachers,
will develop ideas for preventing and dealing with such abuse. Ed
Balls is asking the Task Force to report its conclusions by July.
In particular he has asked them to consider:
a - What more we can do to ensure all school staff and heads are
aware of the powers available to them and use them effectively;
b - What more we can do to ensure that all schools have
discipline policies that minimise abuse of teachers and
anti-bullying policies that protect all their staff from cyberbullying;
c - Whether we should establish a national point of call where
school staff can direct complaints about abusive material;
d - Whether we should have specific guidance for staff who have
experienced internet abuse;
e - How we can best work with industry to address cyberbullying
of teachers;
f - How best to explain the impact of cyberbullying to parents
and their responsibilities to ensure that it is treated as
seriously as other forms of bullying. Where cyberbullies are found
guilty, their parents should be shown what the offence was.
He said:
"Bullying is never acceptable, and we will do all we can to
prevent it in all its forms. The law requires head teachers to
take action aimed at preventing all forms of bullying. It also
gives school staff statutory power to punish bullying whether that
occurs in or out of school. This is especially important in the
case of cyberbullying, which can happen not just outside the
school but even at the home of the bully.
"We already give schools advice on the practical measures
they can take to tackle bullying, including guidance on dealing
with cyberbullying. But I want to go further. Cyberbullying of
teachers should be treated as a serious disciplinary offence.
"I want to make it clear that teachers should feel confident
about reporting such harassment to heads and, in more extreme
cases, to the police. I also want to make it clear that heads
should be confident that the law enables them to punish such
behaviour, even where it takes place off the school premises.
"My Department has a Cyberbullying Task Force that brings
together representatives of all the unions representing school
staff, service providers like MySpace, YouTube, Bebo, Vodafone and
O2 and children's charities like the NSPCC and anti-bullying organisations.
"To date the Task Force has concentrated mainly on
cyberbullying of children. But I will now ask it to extend its
scope and report to me specifically on how to minimise the
bullying and harassment of teachers through new communications technology."
NOTES TO EDITORS
1. In the Children's Plan there was a commitment to ask Sir
Alan Steer to review progress since his 2005 report and to look at
making behaviour partnerships compulsory.
2. Alan Steer's initial response can be found at: http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/behaviourandattendance
3. The 2005 Report of the Practitioners' Group on School
Behaviour and Discipline, chaired by Sir Alan Steer, can be found
at: http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/behaviourandattendance/about/learning_behaviour.cfm
4. The additional £109.5 million for Parent Support Advisers was
announced in November.
5. Later this spring DCSF will be making a curriculum resource
pack called Let's Fight It Together available to schools. The
pack is being produced by Childnet. Vodafone and O2 are helping to
fund it, which is clear evidence of support from the industry. The
pack, which include a short film, will help teachers work with
pupils in lessons and assemblies to develop their understanding of
the impact of cyberbullying and how to prevent it. Lets Fight It
Together emphasises that pupils are not the only victims. The
internet can also be used to harass, bully and abuse teachers and
other school staff, and we are determined to take decisive action
to stop this.
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