Antisocial behaviour plan: little to help teachers

Media Release
30 September 2009

Anti-social behaviour plan has little to help teachers on the front line – PPTA

Plans to tackle anti-social behaviour at schools, announced by education minister Anne Tolley today are a step in the right direction – but will not be enough to help teachers already dealing with disturbed and violent students, says PPTA president Kate Gainsford.

PPTA welcomed Tolley’s announcement at PPTA’s annual conference this afternoon.
that $45million would be put in to educating parents and teachers to deal with disruptive students.

“Plans to identify and work with behaviour issues much earlier on in a child’s life are sensible but these measures will be of little help to teachers returning to the front line on the first day of term four.

The scheme is part of an action plan that arose from the Taumata Whanonga behaviour summit in March, but is yet to be released.

Anti-social and disruptive behaviour in schools is a serious issue that needs to be addressed urgently, Gainsford said.

“We have been waiting for such a long time for this action plan. Every day that goes by with that document sitting on someone’s desk there are schools and teachers and families without coherent and improved support from government agencies.

“I would like to remain positive about the minister’s intentions – research shows early intervention in a child’s life is critical – but what we are worried about is the number of problems that arise when students are in their teens and are in our hands.”

Schools have seen a greater number of students being stood down and expelled for violence against teachers, Gainsford said.

“Schools are having increased police call-outs – it’s simply not acceptable,” she said.

Often students behaviour issues come with them through the school gates – financial pressure, family dysfunction, drugs and alcohol and unemployment can all have a serious impact on a student’s behaviour.

“It’s hard to tell a teenager not to be violent when they may have had 13 years of living with violence,” she said.
Gainford would like to see more support for schools working with outside agencies, such as social-workers and clinical psychologists

“It’s a great idea, we won’t see the results for another decade, and that’s just too late. It needs to be supplemented at the adolescent level now.

Training for 5000 teachers to deal with anti-social behaviour in schools would only be targeted at low decile schools, which was also a concern.

“This is not an issue that is limited to lower decile areas – it is a sector wide problem,” she said.

Another critical element of the scheme would be buy-in, as it was not compulsory, Gainsford said.“Parents aren’t going to attend these things unless they can see that there is value in it.”

“My concern is that the teachers coming back to school on day one of term four – they will be in no better position to know how to deal with this problem.

“It’s an urgent question that needs to be answered by the government for teachers, the community and the future of education.

A paper was put to conference yesterday on disruptive and anti-social students 80, 15, 5 – what we know, what they need, which provided a number of recommendations for coping with this issue. It can be found on the PPTA website at: http://www.ppta.org.nz/index.php/annual-conference

ENDS

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