Kerre Woodham: The OECD report isn't news

Well, it's news, but it's not really, is it?  

An OECD report has found that New Zealand's students are among the worst behaved kids in the world and that bad behaviour has worsened in the last two years. Shock me. A report released this morning by the Education Review Office has called for classroom behaviour to become a priority, and to nationalise the approach to dealing with bad behaviour.  

At the moment, each school must set its own policy, around discipline, about rules, about consequences and they're not getting anywhere near the sort of support and professional help that they need nationwide to deal with bad kids, sad kids, anxious kids, unwell kids, kids with special needs, kids with special neurological needs, as well as the physical. There's a whole plethora of children, and their needs and their learning abilities would be diverse enough if you didn't take into account the bad kids, sad kids, anxious kids, unwell kids. I cannot even imagine what it is like in a modern classroom.   

On the Mike Hosking Breakfast this morning, Ruth Shinoda, who's the Head of the Education Evaluation Center at the Education Review Office said she'd like to see three things happen. 

 

“The first is we're saying, look, let's have more of a national approach, which isn't still doing the same thing but is making sure that schools can access the same support and are really back to succeed. The second is we do need to support our kids, so let's have greater prevention. Let's make sure we're setting them up to succeed at school. And lastly, let's really help those teachers with the expert support and the skills they need. But yes, we do think things like taking cellphones out of classrooms will help.” 

 

Yeah, and it probably will. We're going to have a chat to a bit later in the day about the states in America that are banning kids from under 14, from having TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram accounts. There is so much, so much, that can be said about the reasons for poor behaviour.  

Covid, of course, has been blamed, and countries around the world are seeing distressed kids, sad kids, anxious kids turning up at school. Children who don't know how to interact with one another. Who were terrified at the thought of ‘in real life’ because their teaching has been done online, their social interactions have been done online, and people in the flesh are quite a different thing.  

So, it's happening all over the world, but an OECD report has found our students behaviour is the worst. You only have to look at the news reports of the poor behaviour among society in general to understand that the poor behaviour of the children springs directly from the poor behaviour of the parents or caregivers. They haven't come from nowhere. They haven't been born bad or sad or mad. Their home life shapes them, society helped shape them. What on Earth are the teachers supposed to do? By the time a child is five, a lot of the habits have been ingrained anyway.  

There is nothing as any parent or caregiver knows like the joy of helping children learn and helping them develop their full potential. Each child is different and to be able to watch them grow is such a privilege. To be a part of that process, it is truly, truly wonderful. If teachers were actually able to teach, to do that, to work alongside parents to bring out the very best in each child, it would be the most wonderful job in the world. If parents were presenting to the school well rested, well fed, well-mannered kids, you would have queues of people lining up to be teachers. For those who have the privilege of being able to teach kids who can learn because they've had a good night's sleep and a warm, dry bed, because they've had dinner, it might not be flash, but it's enough to fill their stomachs, it's enough to allow their brains to calm down, settle down, and grow. To have children who have been supported from the time they are born to understand that learning is something precious. That learning will give them choices later in life. If you had kids like that, teachers who've had children like that in their classrooms know what a joy it is.  

When you're spending an hour of your working day trying to impose discipline, there is no fun in that. And the majority of teachers say they leave the profession because they are sick and tired of trying to establish rules, and guidelines, and protocols simply so that they can do the job they were trained to do.  

I think it's absolutely imperative that we have a nationwide code of conduct in our schools. At the moment, leaving it to schools to try and sort out an education policy ad hoc is not working. So, the schools need to have a national code and they need to be supported. It is not their job to take feral children and try and civilize them. That is where the health professionals come in. It's not their job to take a child who has incredibly diverse needs in terms of their brains, in terms of their physical needs, that is not their job. Leave that to the professionals and the experts.  

In a way, the teachers are sort of like our police have become. Oh, the police will fix it, the police can deal with that, the police can do that. And we say that about our schools. Every single time we talk about budgeting or about our inability to drive on the roads, or people's inability to be able to prepare a simple basic meal cheaply ... aah the schools.  

How about parents step up and do the job they're meant to do, so the teachers can do the job they want to do? 

 

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