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Ruth Kelly - the story so far...


“We do not of course agree on everything,” the education secretary admitted at the Secondary Heads Association conference last month.

Observers of Ruth Kelly’s first few months in the job may judge that as something of an understatement.

Ruth Kelly

In less than six months, Ruth Kelly has found herself on the receiving end of stinging criticism.

"Jeering"

Her parent power message, which perhaps unwisely dominated her SHA speech, was reportedly greeted by jeering. Some found it patronising.

Unsurprisingly her zero-tolerance stance on disruptive behaviour has, on the other hand, earned her support among teachers.

Escalating levels of classroom violence is, alongside paperwork, often blamed for driving teachers out of the profession, and teaching unions including the National Association of Schoolmasters and Union of Women Teachers in Scotland have been pushing for tougher action.

Education secretaries before Kelly have grappled with the problem of how to tackle bad behaviour in the classroom while staying true to Labour’s key policy of inclusive education. None has succeeded.

Now Kelly seems to have abandoned all pretence to inclusion with her blunt zero-tolerance message, which will undoubtedly cause concern.

Exclusions

In a speech she gave in January, Kelly said: “Heads have the right to exclude pupils and use other sanctions for the good of the pupil and the good of the wider school.”

Remembering that children who are permanently excluded often face many problems in the long-term, she warned that they should not “simply be thrown on the scrapheap”.

“If we get it wrong, we risk losing an entire generation of children, and the reaping the results in antisocial behaviour, rising crime and increasing social and economic inequality,” she explained.

Dismay

Gerry German, the director of the Communities Empowerment Network, an organisation that represents children excluded from school, is dismayed by Kelly’s position, if unsurprised.

He believes successive education secretaries have delivered the same message, in a different package, on how to deal with disruptive of students in much the same way for more than a quarter of a century.

Although many children arrive at the school gates with any number of problems he says they are often exacerbated by the school environment.

“What is it about our schools and communities that provoke violence?” he asks.

“What we need are comprehensive schools in every neighbourhood. Instead of schools with 1000-plus students we need schools in our inner cities of 500 students at most.”

German adds that public schools have 15 students per class and if that was the case in comprehensives “we would no longer provoke alienation”.

Extended schools

On one hand the government’s policy thrust is towards making schools more closely connected to the communities they are part of, for example through extended schools.

But it is envisaged that this programme will focus mostly on primary schools, while it looks likely that secondary education will be dominated by competition among schools for foundation status, which brings greater independence.

In a system where schools may yet have the freedom to accept, reject or eject students with greater freedom, the zero-tolerance message threatens to create more division.

Even before Kelly’s stance many schools have not been following proper procedures on exclusions, choosing to ignore provisions that allow for restorative justice and mediation, claims German.

Second-rate schooling

He also believes that figures on fixed-term exclusions are much higher than the 100,000 quoted by the Department for Education and Skills.

Following in the footsteps of her predecessors, Kelly has said that children who are excluded from mainstream education must not be given a second-rate schooling.

But German says the education provided by pupil referral units - the most common alternative to mainstream school - is in many ways inferior.

“The trouble with PRUs is that they are not full-time, the curriculum is different and they often do not have the same facilities, such as science laboratories.”