Teachers back a boycott of Sats

The union representing a majority of teachers in England’s primary schools has backed a plan to ballot them on boycotting next year’s Sats tests.

The annual conference of the National Union of Teachers decided a ballot should be held if “all other reasonable avenues have been exhausted”.

It hopes the National Association of Head Teachers will adopt a similar course at its conference next month.

The government said it would be unlawful not to administer the tests.

It is urging NUT members to vote against a boycott.

Autumn action?

The most “high stakes” tests are those taken by 11-year-olds whose results form the basis of the annual league tables.

Tests are also used to bolster the assessments that seven-year-old pupils’ teachers make of their progress. The results are not published but the unions’ attack includes those tests.

The proposal which the NUT conference adopted refers to the whole 2009-10 academic year, not just the tests themselves which are held mainly in May and affect some 600,000 children in each year group.

NUT general secretary Christine Blower said a great deal of preparation work was done by teachers during the year – and there was no statutory obligation on them to do that.

Although nothing has been decided yet, it raises the possibility of action beginning following a ballot in September.

If there were any serious question about the lawfulness of action involving a boycott of Sats we wouldn’t be proposing it Graham Clayton, NUT solicitor Have your say: Sats debate

Proposing the boycott motion, Hazel Danson, a member of the NUT executive, said testing narrowed the curriculum and did not raise standards, but damaged children’s learning.

She called it “educationally barren.”

She said that as a primary school teacher she spent her life trying to ensure that every child achieved their full potential, and she could be trusted to know what needed doing.

The league tables, derived from the results, forced schools to focus their efforts on developing pupils who were just below the required attainment level.

They were “tantamount to wholesale government-funded cheating”, she said.

Max Hyde, who seconded the motion, said Sats must end.

“At best they are detrimental and skew the curriculum and at worst, especially for the most vulnerable children, they are perilously close to a form of child abuse.”

‘Cruelty’

Sasha Elliott is a London teacher who for nine years has taught Year 6 classes – the year group who take the Sats, at the end of their primary schooling.

HOW CHILDREN ARE TESTED Sats and official attainment tables now exist in England only In Wales children take cross-curricular “skills tests” in numeracy, literacy and problem-solving aged nine or 10; results remain within schools. In Northern Ireland there are statutory tests, marked within schools Scottish pupils sit assessments in reading, writing and maths when their teachers feel they are ready, marked in schools School tests: Who takes what

She said she was convinced the children made more progress in the two months following the tests than in the nine months beforehand, when she was having to teach them a “Gradgrind curriculum” in the test subjects – English, maths and science.

“Stop the cruelty,” she said. “Boycott the Sats.”

A spokeswoman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said: “It is regrettable that the NUT leadership and their conference, in voting for a boycott, are setting themselves against the clear wishes of parents and the need to raise standards in every school and in every child.

“Not only is a boycott unlawful and causes great disruption to the schools; it also sends entirely the wrong message to children and young people an undermines the standing of the teaching profession.

“The unions representing the majority of teachers do not support the approach being urged by the NUT leadership and we urge the NUT to think again.”

The other unions that represent classroom teachers – primarily the NASUWT and the ATL – have not backed the joint campaign being mounted by NUT and NAHT leaders.

Some NUT members say Sats make children nervous

The NUT’s Christine Blower said they did not, however, support Sats and league tables any more than her union did.

The NUT conference is being held this year in Cardiff – where the Welsh Assembly Government scrapped the Sats in its schools between 2002 and 2005.

The NUT says this absence of testing in Wales has not resulted in an upsurge of “barbarian hordes”.

However, the Welsh inspectorate, Estyn, has expressed concern that the proportion of five to seven-year-olds with good levels of reading and writing has stopped rising over the past five years.

Some of the NUT delegates held a small demonstration in the Cardiff sunshine outside their conference venue, wearing red T-shirts with the slogan No Useless Tests (NUT).

One, David Clinch from Devon, said: “Sats are like cigarettes. They’ve got no benefit to the human body whatsoever.

We want to scrap the Sats now. We know they’re bad for children NUT member Sara Tomlinson

“What they do is make children very nervous about their learning in fact they are not learning they are being coached to do particular tests which have no benefit to them at all,” he said.

“The key benefit is to the state to make schools compete against one another and to put schools into league tables, which is not what we think, we believe in collaboration and innovation in teaching.”

Another, Sara Tomlinson from Lambeth in London said: “We want to scrap the Sats now. We know they’re bad for children.

“Every report, every survey that’s done by expert groups says they are damaging to children.”

She said there was no problem with having a bank of materials to assess children, but there was a problem with the top-down imposition of test targets.

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Of all the schools in London, Michelle Obama chose us. That makes us feel pretty special, I tell you.’

When the girls at London’s Elizabeth Garrett Anderson school turned up last Thursday, they had no idea that they were about to play host to America’s first lady. Carole Cadwalladr hears how, in a week in which all the talk was of her fashion choices, Michelle Obama showed her own political colours and inspired staff and students with the only public speech of her UK visit

Michelle Obama with pupils at London's Elizabeth Garrett school

 

There was a strange stillness last week in Islington’s Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Language College on the last day of term. It wasn’t just that the school had finished a day early and it was a training day for staff and a revision day for pupils soon to take their GCSEs. Nor even that the sun had finally decided to shine for the start of the Easter holidays.

It was that, 24 hours earlier, an event so surprising and extraordinary had happened in this very ordinary-looking London school that the few people milling around its lobby had the air of having experienced some freak natural phenomenon – a hurricane, perhaps, or a tidal wave or, as actually happened, a visit by the first lady of the United States, Michelle Obama.

At the culmination of the Obamas’ first visit to Britain, she visited the school on Thursday and, the next day, staff and students all seemed to be suffering some sort of post-traumatic international celebrity icon syndrome. In the hallway, I met Nuria Afonso, 15, and Shereka Phipps, 15, both wearing the dazed expressions of people who still can’t quite believe what has just happened.

“She hugged us!” said Nuria. “Can you believe that? She. Hugged. Us! It was amazing. Amazing.” And she shook her head. They were both in the school choir and had spent the past few weeks rehearsing for a performance in front of what they’d been told would be “a very special guest”.

“We didn’t know she was coming! It was complete shock. We only found out on the day. Nobody knew. The staff didn’t know. We had to guess. And we guessed pretty much everybody. And it wasn’t until she was there, on stage, that we found out. It was mental.”

It was, in a whole host of ways. Because in a week in which Michelle Obama managed to dominate almost every news bulletin, and in which her wardrobe, or at least discussion of her wardrobe, threatened to eclipse the entire G20 summit, she somehow managed to rise above the role that the combined forces of the Anglo-American media seemed determined to create for her.

Newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic endlessly commented on her clothes, her shoes, her fashion choices, the “controversial” blue plaid cardigan that she wore to visit the school, even though the only remotely “controversial” aspect of it was that certain female, waspish fashion writers decided not to like it and, which, according to Google, has so far drawn 1,925 news articles all its own, including one from the Huffington Post, which gave it the inevitable moniker “Argyle-gate”.

And yet, what the fashion commentators nearly missed was that the visit to the school not only produced the most emotional moments of her entire visit, but that the speech was also a profoundly moving, very personal statement of her political purpose and the new role that she is still in the process of creating as the president’s wife.

It was the only speech she made during her trip, and the school had, apparently, been deliberately chosen: girls-only, inner-city, its pupils, of whom 20% are the children of refugees or asylum seekers, speak a total of 55 different languages and 92% of whom are from a black or minority background. It was her first speech, she pointed out, as first lady on a foreign visit; she mentioned it several times, in fact, as if she was having problems believing it herself. And then, carefully, using personal stories and anecdotes, she drew parallels between her life and those of the girls in front of her, at times appearing close to tears.

“I want you to know that we have very much in common. For nothing in my life’s path would have predicted that I would be standing here as the first lady of the United States of America. There was nothing in my story that would land me here. I wasn’t raised with wealth or resources of any social standing to speak of…

“If you want to know the reason why I’m standing here, it’s because of education. I never cut class. Sorry I don’t know if anybody here is cutting class. I never did. I loved getting As. I liked being smart. I loved being on time. I loved getting my work done. I thought being smart was cooler than anything in the world.”

A day later, those words were still buzzing in the air. “I definitely agree with that,” said Shereka. “Being smart is cool. I want to work hard and do really well and then I want to go to university and become a criminal justice lawyer.”

Why a lawyer?

“Because I believe that everybody has rights.”

Both Nuria and Shereka closely followed the US presidential election and said that, even before her visit, Michelle Obama had inspired them both, girls born thousands of miles away, personally.

“You can relate to her story. She said, ‘I’m a working-class girl.’ And more or less all of us are working-class. She made it. And it made me think: if she can do it, so can I.”

For a lesson in how to empower young women, you could do no better than to listen to Michelle Obama’s speech in its entirety. The news bulletins picked up its highlights, the point where, very close to tears, she said: “When I look at a performance like this, it just reminds me that there are diamonds like this all over the world. All of you are jewels. You are precious and you touch my heart. And it’s important for the world to know that there are wonderful girls like you all over the world.”

Why do you think she was so moved, I asked Nuria and Shereka.

“Well, I mean, we was fabulous,” said Nuria. “We was really good.”

“I think she saw a bit of herself in us,” said Shereka.

Even a day on, it’s impossible not to be heartened by how much these girls were touched. Brenda Mensah, 16, who sang the solo, said her parents only found out from watching the news, “and my dad was just screaming and screaming and my mum had two mobile phones pressed to her ears and we had relatives in Ghana who’d seen me and my uncle from the States rang and he’d seen me”.

She was nervous, she said, and then she wasn’t. “When I saw her there, my eyes popped. They were like eggs. And then she gave me this encouraging smile and my confidence just went up, it went sky-rocketing. I’m still flying now.”

But then, this is what the speech, what Michelle Obama’s political agenda, is all about. It’s about trying to promote a role for women, particularly young women, that goes beyond discussions of the relative merits, or not, of Argyle cardigans. More than anything else, it was an attempt to imbue them with the confidence to make good choices.

What’s interesting, of course, is the way in which she so naturally filled the Diana role, a role that, until now, we seemed to have forgotten we needed, or that ever existed. Gill McLay, the school’s receptionist, who is as starry-eyed as any of the pupils, said some of the staff were crying, “and I almost was. She’s just got that human touch, hasn’t she?”

She has. She had already “hugged” the Queen – their hands had rested momentarily on each other’s backs. Or as the Daily Mail put it, “an electrifying moment of palpable majesté: a breach of centuries-long protocol … ” and which the New York Daily News noted was last attempted by Paul Keating, the Australian prime minister in 1992, which promptly landed him with the nickname “The Lizard of Oz”.

She had been the star of a spouses’ dinner hosted by Sarah Brown and attended by what a Downing Street spokesman called “the cream of British womanhood”, including JK Rowling, and Dame Kelly Holmes. And she had visited Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centre at Charing Cross Hospital, where another of her unscheduled hugs had occurred with Trudi Cogdell, a 38-year-old mother of five, who has advanced breast cancer.

There’s no denying that she has a Diana-ish effect. Cogdell told reporters that she’d been told Michelle Obama would stand “a few metres away. But as soon as she walked in the door, she came and sat down right next to me. She said, ‘Come on, big hugs’, and she cuddled me and my children.”

But for all the hugs, Michelle Obama is no Diana and it was her visit to the school, and more particularly the speech that she delivered there, that thwarted the attempt by the Anglo-American press to reduce her Democratic politics and feminist principles into nothing more than a fashion cypher whose sole purpose is to have her clothing choices beatified by their mutual consent.

She’s as much an ideologue as her husband and, while Barack Obama is having to make hard choices in an ever-worsening economic climate, what the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson speech demonstrated is how Michelle Obama has become the political yin to his yang; the up to his down.

Jo Dibb, the headteacher, isn’t quite sure why, out of all the schools in London, hers was picked. “A piece of paper landed on my desk saying, ‘Would you like a talk from the US cultural attaché on civil rights?’ and I gave it to the librarian and said, ‘Don’t feel obliged’. But she went ahead and organised it and he was apparently very impressed by the quality of the girls’ questions.

“And then the next thing I know, I’m coming back from lunch, and my PA says, ‘You’d better sit down. The US embassy has just called and asked if you’d like to have Michelle Obama give a speech at the school.’”

There’s no doubting the huge sense of achievement that everyone at the school feels. Or the pride they take in it. Brenda Mensah said: “We are always involved in good things. Islington schools always get a bad press. But EGA is getting better and better by the day. We all come together as a team. I’m so proud of it. Definitely.”

But Islington schools do get a bad press. For years, Islington’s schools have been held up as textbook examples of both Labour’s failures and the hypocritical double standards of some of its politicians. And it’s hard not to wonder if there was any Downing Street input into the choice of location for Michelle Obama’s speech.

It’s not just Tony Blair who refused to send his children to the borough’s schools. Emily Thornberry, the local Labour MP, who lives a couple of streets away, sends hers to a grammar school 13 miles away in Potters Bar; Margaret Hodge, MP and former Islington council leader, sent hers to schools in neighbouring Camden; and, most recently, Boris Johnson spoke of “extracting” his children from the state system “because I live in Islington”.

“Did he really say that?” Dibb asks. “If he did, I think that’s very, very sad.”

In its last Ofsted inspection, the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson was declared “outstanding” and, although it sits in a network of streets dominated by council estates, just a few hundred yards away are the Georgian villas of Barnsbury, including Richmond Avenue, where the Blairs used to live, now the haunt of City lawyers and bankers, all of whom refuse to send their children to the local school.

Islington schools have always been what Dibb calls “a hot potato”. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson opened in 1960 as Risinghill Comprehensive, one of the country’s first, but was shut down five years later for being “too liberal”. After years of bad press, it has picked itself up and is outperforming all expectations: it’s just that the middle classes, who live nearby, refuse to believe it.

Is there a political analogy in here? That the government has delivered on education but we’re all just too stubborn to believe it? Or is it just a coincidence that, out of all the schools in all of London, the one closest to Tony Blair’s old house just happened to be picked, the one that Boris refuses to send his daughter to?

Or is it the reverse? A stark illustration of the claim by the Sutton Trust, an educational charity, that the type of social mobility so dazzlingly embodied by Michelle Obama has actually worsened under Labour. How much more damning can it be that it takes an American politician to find something so positive and inspiring in a school shunned by its own MP?

Whatever. Brenda Mensah has formed her own conclusions: “I mean out of 2,500 schools in London, Michelle Obama chose us. That makes us feel pretty special, I tell you.”

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Teachers go to war over life in our classrooms

From violent parents to excessive homework, from unruly pupils to the plight of special needs children, teachers will this week switch their focus from traditional concerns of pay and conditions to the state of teaching in UK classrooms. Here, Liz Lightfoot sets out the key issues causing alarm – including a plan to boycott Sats tests that is set to spark a bitter battle

Teachers are to embark on their biggest battle with the government since the bitter strikes of the 1980s. This time it is not about pay, but the state of education itself. In an unprecedented campaign to drive national tests out of primary schools, the National Union of Teachers is almost certain to vote to boycott Sats for seven- and 11-year-olds.

This is not an idle threat by militant delegates that will be overturned by the leadership at a later date; it is likely to see tens of thousands of teachers and heads in England defy ministers by refusing to carry out the tests from next year.

Not only does the boycott, which would wreck the government’s league tables of schools, have the full backing of Christine Blower, the union’s acting general secretary, it also has the crucial support of the National Association of Head Teachers, which will ask for a “yes” vote on the same proposal at its conference next month. The two unions have branded statutory tests as “unacceptable for the future of children’s education”.

Mick Brookes, who leads the 28,000 head teachers and deputies of the NAHT, has condemned Sats as “damaging and demeaning”, arguing that league tables blight children’s education and humiliate his colleagues. He added: “We are very, very serious about it.”

But tests are not the only issue teachers are preparing to fight over this week and next. As each of the major unions lines up to host their annual conferences, they are drawing the battlelines around a string of other issues: from violent pupils smashing windows to aggressive parents abusing teachers; from the postcode lottery for children with special needs to the fact that people not qualified as teachers are taking lessons; from homework to the dearth of male teachers in primary schools.

The stand-off will start tomorrow with an attack on the erosion of parental responsibility and the breakdown of society. With evidence that its members are being increasingly abused and assaulted by parents and children, the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) will call for the government’s “every child matters” agenda to be supplemented by a policy in which teachers are treated with respect – the “every person matters” agenda.

Meanwhile, the NASUWT teaching union is planning to focus on the plight of children with special needs. Ten years after Labour launched its plan to include more children with mental or physical disabilities or impairment in mainstream classes, a ballot of members put motions on special needs in the top three priority places on the conference agenda. The closure of special schools as a result of the inclusion policy has, they say, led to a postcode lottery for places.

As for the tests, union solidarity only goes so far. Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT, has called the proposed boycott “reckless and irresponsible”, predicting that the loss of the externally marked tests in English, maths and science for 11-year-olds would result in a much bigger workload of pupil assessment for teachers.

The National Association of Governors has warned that head teachers could face disciplinary action if they fail to carry out their duties under the law.

Assaults on teachers

Malicious attacks by pupils must be stopped

One teacher who is just about to retire will miss her colleagues and most of her pupils, but she will not miss the constantly broken window for which she has had to call out the glazier at least 17 times. Another will not miss being woken up by obscene phone calls. And a third will be relieved not to have to pay for his car to be resprayed yet again to cover all the deliberate scratchmarks.

These are just three examples of vandalism and abuse that pupils have inflicted on their teachers, according to Maxine Bradshaw, below, a member of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) in north Wales. On Tuesday she will ask delegates at the union’s annual conference to deplore the increasing levels of violence against staff, and the malicious intrusion into their private lives. She will call on the union’s leaders to support “zero tolerance” signs within schools, threatening to take action against anyone who maliciously harms teachers or their property and to lobby for the police to take more effective action to protect members of the profession.

“Nowadays, you are more likely to hear teachers saying they want to live outside the towns in which they work and this aggression is part of the reason,” said Bradshaw. “There was a time when children knew there would be consequences and when society was unafraid to challenge young people when they were doing wrong but now adults more and more seem to feel powerless and fearful, which makes it harder for teachers to instil a sense of responsibility in pupils.”

She said it was crucial that teachers had the support of the pupils’ families, describing a recent incident when she asked a child not to walk in a particular area and his mother overruled her. “So he was allowed to break the rule and if he breaks the rule, then so can 600 other children and someone will get hurt.”

National testing

Dilemma for head who wants Sats but whose union is opposed to tests

Robert Trawford is the head of the second most improved primary school in the country and does not believe he and his staff could have done it without national curriculum tests.

He is also a member of the National Association of Head Teachers, which is calling on members to boycott Sats. “It’s going to be difficult,” he said. “I would have to think very seriously about it, because I believe you have to have an independent measure by which people who don’t know your school can make a decision.”

Trawford, the head of Walsall Wood primary in the West Midlands, insists that his teachers do not “teach to the test”. But many of his colleagues feel that Sats are harming education and they are preparing for a battle to drive them out.

Mick Brookes, the NAHT’s general secretary, predicts that the union, which represents 28,000 heads and their deputies, will back the stance at its annual conference next month. “We feel it is unconscionable that we should simply stand by and allow the educational experience of children to be blighted and for colleagues to be humiliated and demeaned on an annual basis by the publication of league tables,” he said.

The proposed joint action by head teachers and the National Union of Teachers (NUT) would see teachers refuse to administer the tests for seven and 11-year-olds next year. The NUT will start debating the motion at its annual conference in Cardiff on Saturday.

Christine Blower, the union’s acting general secretary, said: “There is room for believing that something might change but the reason we are making this statement now is that we are very determined that league tables must go and Sats must go. By giving warning that we are not going to do anything until the next academic year we are giving the government plenty of time to respond while making the point that we are very, very serious about it.”

The combined might of the NUT and NAHT will make this a serious challenge, but ministers will take heart from the fact that other unions, including the NASUWT, do not support the boycott.

Meanwhile, leaders of some of the other workplace unions fear it could be an own goal at a time when Ed Balls, the children’s secretary, is exploring alternatives, because he would not want to be seen to bow to the threat of industrial action.

Back in Walsall, Trawford said it was easy to knock Sats, but argued that there had to be some form of national yardstick by which schools could measure pupils’ progress and inform parents.

Homework

In primary schools, it’s a waste of children’s and teachers’ time

Not many children will follow the proceedings of the teacher unions’ conferences, but one motion might interest them: a call for homework to be abolished in primary schools. According to teachers belonging to the ATL in Cambridgeshire, Peterborough, Leeds and Wigan, formal homework set by teachers under the direction of the government is of dubious benefit.

Since 1998 the government has told schools they should expect primary schoolchildren to read for 20 minutes a night. Under the guidelines, teachers are also expected to set homework of an hour each week for six- and seven-year-olds, one-and-a-half hours for eight- and nine-year-olds and 30-minutes a day for 10- and 11-year-olds.

But delegates will be asked to back a motion which states: “Conference believes that homework in the primary school is a waste of children’s and teachers’ time which could be spent much more profitably on effective learning, both in and out of the classroom.”

The subject is also likely to come up at the annual conference of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) in Cardiff, which starts on Friday. Christine Blower, the NUT’s acting general secretary, said there were “any number of things that children should be doing in the time they spend at home, and that doesn’t necessarily have to be homework”.

At Walsall Wood primary in the West Midlands, head Robert Trawford does not think homework should be “an extension of school”, but that it has a place. “I think there is a place for developing learning at home and involving parents in what their children are doing at school,” he said.

Special needs policy

Inclusion is not the answer for every child

The policy of including special needs children in mainstream classes has created a lottery for the reduced number of places in special schools, the NASUWT will claim.

Though some are happy to be educated alongside their peers, others, particularly those with autism or emotional and behavioural difficulties, are struggling because their needs are not being adequately met, members say. A decade after David Blunkett, the first blind man to hold the office of education secretary, announced the policy of including all but the most seriously disabled children in mainstream schools, the union will place the issue at the top of its annual conference agenda.

“Traditionally, members vote for motions on behaviour, but this year they chose special needs which is an indication that there are now no teachers whose lives are not touched by the issue,” said Chris Keates, the union’s general secretary.

Celia Foote, a special needs teacher in Leeds, said that every child had the right to be educated in a local school, but if it did not meet their needs they should have an alternative. “Inclusion has been excellent for a lot of children, but we see children who are unhappy and isolated,” she said.

“I can think of one lovely boy on the autistic spectrum who didn’t make a single friend all his time in school, whereas if he had been in a special school there would have been teachers to help him relate with others in a setting in which he felt secure. Children are being pushed to keep up with a completely inappropriate curriculum, which means they end up learning very little.”

Foote argued that it was not just children with special needs who were suffering: “When children are not learning anything because of their difficulties they can be disruptive, which is difficult for teachers to deal with and can impinge on all the other pupils in the class.”

A problem for parents is that some children who do well in a small primary school, cannot cope with the move to a secondary school, she added.

Unruly pupils

Teachers have to do toilet training and help children to dress and undress

Parents will feature in most of this year’s union conferences, and not in a positive light. Teachers claim they are being forced to take over key parts of parenting, such as toilet training, helping children to dress and undress, and how to eat at a table. There will also be complaints that parents undermine teachers by criticising them in front of their children and challenging their authority.

“Parents know their rights, but they don’t know their responsibilities. These parents don’t want anything or anyone to go against their own private castle of authority,” said Sam Bechler, the ATL branch secretary for Wolverhampton.

A substantial minority of parents “foster a rebellious attitude in their children”, he added. “We are facing a radical change in culture. Parents are the second generation of the philosophy that says parents have rights and teachers have responsibilities. It’s the attitude that ‘they are my kids and my kids never do anything wrong and you have no right to tell them off’.

“Children smuggle mobile phones into lessons and, when disciplined, phone their fathers and brothers. Mothers are among the worst. We had an incident recently when a mother came in and hauled her child out of detention. What does that say about the authority of the teachers?”

More and more parents are working under extreme pressure and some of the responsibilities that used to belong to the family are being put on schools, added Jackie Harvey, a deputy head from Hertfordshire. “There are schools with parents who are professional people and who come along and say that their children are ready for school – they can read and count.

“However, when they start, teachers find they don’t know how to dress or undress, they don’t know how to listen respectfully, or sit at a table and eat, or wait their turn and share – all the things that used to be taught in the home.”

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Abuse of teachers by parents and pupils on the rise, says survey

Research on abuse comes after head of teachers’ union launches devastating attack on parents, accusing many of failing their children and undermining schools

Teachers are facing increasingly abusive behaviour from parents and pupils, according to research revealed today.

More than a third (39%) of teachers have been confronted by an aggressive parent or guardian, and nearly a quarter of teachers have endured physical violence from a student.

The research, from the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), comes after the head of the union launched a devastating attack on parents, accusing many of failing in their responsibilities and undermining schools. Writing in yesterday’s Observer, Mary Bousted said that children were arriving at school ill-prepared by their parents, with a lack of respect for authority and lacking basic social and verbal skills.

The survey of 1,000 school and college staff, published to coincide with the start of the ATL conference in Liverpool today, found incidents of insults, derogatory comments and intimidation by parents swearing at or threatening teachers.

In most cases, parents became aggressive because their child was disciplined in class or received poor grades and students often copied their behaviour.

Although 87% of staff had told their school about the aggression, a fifth felt they did not receive adequate support.

Teachers made over 200 personal insurance claims cases to the union for damage to property by pupils over the last two years – 69 incidents of malicious damage to vehicles, such as “keying” of cars, and 146 of damage to property.

A secondary teacher in Bristol, questioned for the survey, said: “Lack of support of teachers by parents is the most disheartening part of this profession and the thing most likely to make me leave it.

“Poor student behaviour reflects the standards that they see at home and children cannot be held completely accountable for the values, or lack of, instilled in them at home.”

Some 40% of teachers surveyed said student behaviour had got worse over the past two years, while 58% said it had worsened over the past five.

Nearly all (87%) of staff said they had dealt with disruptive pupils already this year, mostly low-level disruption such as talking in class, not paying attention or horsing around.

But over a third of primary teachers reported incidents of violent student behaviour such as punching and kicking, compared with 20% of those in secondary schools.

Bousted said: “It is distressing that poor student behaviour continues to be a widespread problem in schools, and shocking that over a third of teaching staff have experienced aggression from students’ parents or guardians.

“ATL firmly believes that no member of staff should be subjected to violent behaviour by either students or parents, who should be acting as good role models by supporting staff and helping them create a more positive learning environment for their children.”

Teachers at the ATL conference will debate violence and malicious intrusion of teachers’ private lives.

Maxine Bradshaw, proposing the motion from ATL’s north Wales branch, will say: “We live in a time now where anything goes and young people know all their rights but have no idea of their responsibilities. Parents and teachers seem powerless to discipline children for fear of repercussions or, worse still, prosecution.

“The irony of the situation is such that many teachers who chose this caring profession have been subjected to a distinct lack of care by their employers and law enforcement agencies in terms of protecting their privacy and property.”

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GCSE basic skills pledge scrapped

The government has dropped the key part of its pledge to improve teenagers’ functional English and maths skills.

It had promised employers that no-one in England would be able to get a good GCSE grade without knowing the basics.

But qualifications advisers have said that making GCSE results dependent on a separate skills test could bring the qualifications into disrepute.

Ministers have accepted their advice and say they will just encourage young people to take separate skills papers.

‘Relentless drive’

In 2005, the then education secretary, Ruth Kelly, had said it was totally unacceptable that people could obtain a grade C or above in English or maths but be weak in basic literacy and numeracy, echoing a long-standing complaint from employers.

We accept that we should not make a link between the functional skills assessments and the GCSE
Schools Minister Jim Knight

She said there would be a “relentless drive” to improve those basic skills.

She announced that pupils taking GCSE maths and English would have to pass a test in functional skills, such as writing a letter or working out their family budget.

Without passing this test they would not be able to gain a grade C in these exams.

That was the plan, and the qualifications regulator for England, Ofqual, has been investigating ways of realising it.

In a letter to the Department for Children, Schools and Families – sent last October – Ofqual chair Kathleen Tattersall said that having a basic skills “hurdle” that was separate from the main GCSE “causes problems with the perceived fairness of the outcomes, as well as technical difficulties”.

It might mean, for instance, that the same script could be awarded different grades in England and Wales.

“That outcome would be unacceptable and would risk bringing the qualifications into disrepute.”

Incentives

Ofqual recommended having separate tests of functional skills but finding other incentives to get students to take them than linking them to their GCSEs.

The department has finally written back accepting this advice.

Schools Minister Jim Knight said it wanted functional skills to be at the heart of all its 14-19 changes.

Newly-published criteria would mean that new GCSEs to be taught from September 2010 would test functional skills extensively, he said.

“So, for now, we accept that we should not make a link between the functional skills assessments and the GCSE”.

In the meantime schools would be encouraged to give young people opportunities to take freestanding functional skills qualifications.

This is the approach adopted in Wales and Northern Ireland, where having the skills qualifications is not a condition for getting good GCSE grades.

The Association of School and College Leaders welcomed the change. Its general secretary, Dr John Dunford, said the exam system was “overburdened”.

He said the tests would be useful, but “school and college leaders will need to feel confident that the tests will be valued by employers before they decide to enter all students”.

The change means the government accepts the impracticality of its promise that youngsters should not get a good GCSE without demonstrating functional numeracy and literacy.

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