VIEWS & OPINION
Zero tolerance policy towards bad behaviour is fuelling a mental health crisis in schools says NAHT – what can be done?
Comment by DR MARGOT SUNDERLAND, child psychologist, neuroscience expert and the Director of Education and Training at The Centre for Child Mental Health
I strongly believe that the implementation of a zero tolerance policy for challenging behaviour and not following rules will be harmful to far too many children. Harsh discipline in schools flies in the face of what we have learnt from neuroscience research over the last 20 years, and can traumatise or re- traumatise children – we are in danger of damaging children’s minds if we adopt a zero tolerance approach to challenging behaviour. Harsh discipline triggers a child’s social defence system leading to primitive
fight/flight/freeze behaviour. It is only when we are open and engaged, warm, smiling and welcoming that a traumatised child’s physiology calms down and they no longer feel threatened, and in many cases this results in challenging behaviour ceasing. Research shows that harsh words and discipline can damage the verbal
processing centre in the brain – leading to lower verbal IQ. Isolation is as bad for physical health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day and yet isolation rooms are still used in schools across the UK. Before setting any behaviour policy, we need to understand the adult-child
interactions that harm and trigger challenging behaviour and those that heal and result in good behaviour. In doing so, we ask the question not, “why is the child behaving in this way?" but, “what has happened to them?”. Knowing the cause of challenging behaviour is key to how we respond. Research shows that if a child has experienced four adverse events – such as
parents separating, moving homes several times or a parent with a drinking or mental health problem – then they are 32 times more likely to exhibit challenging behaviour. Research shows that traumatised children experience the same over-
activation in the parts of their brains that anticipate and respond to threat as soldiers returning home from war. Yet, we permanently exclude thousands of traumatised children a year – many of them because their over-active stress response systems manifest in challenging behaviour. Research also shows that if help is not provided, the children who have suffered a traumatic loss have a specific chemical reaction in their brain, meaning they are very likely to move from the pain of the loss to violence against themselves or others. Schools need to implement relationship policies as well as behaviour
policies – which ensure teachers are interacting with pupils in ways that don’t cause the bad behaviour in the first place. Before writing a behaviour policy, schools should know the neuroscience of what heals and what harms children’s brains, and what alleviates challenging behaviour and what exacerbates it. Secure attachments to teachers are associated with higher grades, greater
emotional regulation, social competence, willingness to take on challenges and with lower levels of ADHD and delinquency. And these effects are even stronger for more challenging students.
Mandarin now and into the future Comment by MELVYN ROFFE, Principal of George Watson’s College
It goes without saying that Mandarin Chinese is important. With an estimated 1.1 billion speakers, as the economic, political and cultural power of China grows, Chinese is increasingly heard spoken by tourists on the streets of Britain. Many cities, including Edinburgh, are training guides and proving signage in Chinese in order to be ‘China ready’. According to the CBI’s research of around
500 British companies, 28% believe Mandarin is useful to their business. A recent study by the Mandarin Excellence Programme found that parents viewed Mandarin as boosting their child’s career prospects and as a skill that would open their child’s mind to an exciting and dynamic culture. I couldn’t agree more. But given the
average Brit’s unwillingness to learn any foreign language, it is perhaps unsurprising that there are too few confident non-heritage Chinese speakers in Britain and opportunities to learn Chinese in school are limited. In
July/August 2018
Scotland, students were first able to sit exams in Mandarin in 2009, yet in 2017 only 144 candidates sat exams. It is vital we seek to extend this further. In Edinburgh we are doing our bit. In
partnership between my school and two state schools and with generous funding from the Swire Chinese Language Foundation, we’ve established the Swire Chinese Language Centre Edinburgh (SCLCE) to extend opportunities for pupils to study Mandarin Chinese from primary up to Scottish National 4, National 5 and Higher exams. We’re committed to providing a long term,
well-resourced environment for Chinese language learning to take place with UK trained and registered teachers working to fully integrate the subject into the curriculum offer of a wide range of schools. In the last academic year over 600 pupils across 12 different state schools have benefited from this approach. And amongst those to benefit most have
been pupils who attend schools which face some of the greatest challenges of any school in Scotland and who have previously found foreign language learning unrewarding. The very fact that Chinese is different means that pupils engage with it in ways that they did not engage with languages such as French or Spanish. In addition, our cultural learning
programme includes opportunities for pupils to experience elements of Chinese literature, music, dance and cuisine, and a fully-funded visit to Beijing will soon expand the horizons of pupils whose previous experience has been curtailed by disadvantage. Whatever the future holds it is difficult to
imagine that China will not have an influential voice in shaping it. We must do all we can to understand that voice and, what is more, to grasp this opportunity to place a non- European culture at the centre of young people’s educational experience for the first time in our educational history.
www.education-today.co.uk 21
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