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zero-tolerance

If you tolerate this then your children will be next

2020-07-08T17:37:01+01:00March 16th, 2019|behaviour|

What kinds of poor behaviour should we tolerate? How much should we tolerate? There's a wellspring of opinion that zero tolerance is too much, that we ought to tolerate some poor behaviour, but how much? I don't think anyone would be prepared to argue that we should tolerate 100%, so is 50% OK? 25%? 10%? Clearly, having a discussion about the percentage of poor behaviour which we ought to tolerate is absurd. Maybe we'd be better off debating whether some kinds of poor behaviour are just 'high spirits'? The trouble with this is that it's devilishly difficult to distinguish between good-humoured [...]

What every teacher needs to know about…Zero Tolerance

2016-06-07T16:09:00+01:00November 21st, 2015|behaviour|

My latest column for the wonderful folk at Teach Secondary magazine looks at the ins and outs of "Zero Tolerance" behaviour systems. There is a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue. Edmund Burke If you’re going to manage children’s behaviour you need a healthy balance of carrot and stick. Positive reinforcement is great, but at some point children confront us with behaviour that requires sanctioning. After many years of the education system tolerating woefully low standards of behaviour (we all have our particular horror stories) the pendulum has swung to the right. More and more schools are adopting a ‘zero-tolerance’ [...]

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