Basic safeguarding is not about being strict
If you don't understand what schools do, or why, consider keeping your opinion to yourself
I recently wrote a blog post about progressive and traditionalist education:
This was not the first post I had written on this topic. It’s a recurring theme because not every teacher is aware of the debate, but once you are, you start to see its influence everywhere. It’s useful to remember the progressive versus traditionalist debate when people try to frame the debate differently. It may seem divisive, but an explicit progressive versus traditionalist dispute can lead to greater insight than squabbles about particular schools and practices. Those squabbles often serve only to hide our actual ideological commitments.
One thing that prompted me to write about the genuine ideological conflict in education was the recent tendency of progressives who don’t work in schools to see ideological conflict where none exists. While they may shy away from being explicit about the disputes between progressives and traditionalists, some progressives have no problem condemning MATs, schools or teachers for being “strict”, “no excuses” or “zero tolerance”. While I think the latter two terms are now close to meaningless, there are, nevertheless, some genuine differences in the ways schools approach behaviour. However, those who don’t work in schools have a habit of throwing these terms around when talking about things that are normal in schools. In particular, there have been several recent attempts to claim that schools are “strict”, “no excuses” or “zero tolerance” because of normal safeguarding procedures.
Home visits
The first example of safeguarding being framed as controversial in this way is the one I addressed in these two blog posts:
As I explained in those posts, home visits for unexplained or suspicious absences have been normal for a very long time. Since the death of a four-year-old boy in 2017, it has been normal for staff to view absences from school as a potential safeguarding issue, and to make efforts to confirm that an absent child is safe. However, a mix of social media trolls and lazy journalists have managed to frame home visits as something “strict schools” do out of cruelty.
Smoking
The second example is a little more obscure, just one person, but it shocked me when I saw it on Twitter.
Like many aspects of safeguarding, the prohibition on smoking is much more rigorous now than it used to be. I remember the days when it was accepted that, as hardcore smokers would not be deterred by anything short of the threat of permanent exclusion, some areas of the school grounds would be unofficial smoking areas littered with fag ends1. The convention was that if you slowly walked towards a pupil, and they were still smoking when you got to them, then they were in trouble. But if they weren’t smoking when you got close, then, regardless of how strong the smell of smoke was, you let it go.
This was, of course, organised hypocrisy. But that is always the case with rules that are not practical to enforce. You end up with a compromise between rule-breakers and rule-enforcers that both can live with. The 2001 television programme Teachers depicted nicotine-addicted teachers secretly smoking alongside their pupils. And while I never encountered that, tolerance of smoking was normal. The situation was stable, but not in any way acceptable.
In the years since then, smoking has declined to the point where schools can safely threaten anyone caught bringing cigarettes into school with exclusion. I can easily picture the smoking zones for the schools I worked in during the 00s, but not for any schools I have worked in since. I cannot recall the last time I heard of a pupil being caught smoking cigarettes. It seemed like a new generation would grow up nicotine-free until the appearance of vapes. While intended as a smoking-cessation device for adults, vapes now appear to have reintroduced children to nicotine addiction. However, it has not yet reached the point where schools have given up enforcing the prohibition on smoking.
School trips
The first sentence of this tweet and, the controversy that followed it, is the most recent example of safeguarding being demonised.
I realise that, despite the first sentence, the example here is about reward trips, not school trips in general. Some progressives object to rewards (as well as punishments). It’s not always clear why. Sometimes they claim they don’t work. Sometimes they claim that withholding rewards is cruel. It’s also possible that the author of the tweet had in mind the occasions when a pupil is excluded from a trip when their presence will ruin it for everyone else because of their behaviour. School staff volunteer to run trips and pupils volunteer to go on them, so a trip might not go ahead if it is expected some pupils will terrorise those who go on it. Of course, there is room for debate around these issues. However, that debate, as in this example, often presents badly behaved children as victims with no consideration of the harm they have done to others.
The more general point, that being “excluded” from a school trip might make a child feel bad, misses the single most important reason this might happen. Some children are not invited on school trips because of safeguarding. Almost all trips rely on pupils not wandering off when they feel like it. For many trips, it is critical that pupils follow instructions and don’t do anything dangerous. If a child cannot be trusted to follow instructions, they may be a danger to themselves and others. I’ve shared these examples before, but here once again are three news stories from over twenty years ago about schoolchildren who were killed or injured after failing to follow instructions on a school trip.
All three tragedies show how dangerous it can be when a pupil fails to follow instructions. Such tragedies would be much more likely if schools allowed defiant pupils to attend school trips of this sort.
It’s about safeguarding, stupid
The unnecessary controversies about home visits led to national media coverage and a great deal of social media abuse aimed at teachers. The outrage over school trips led to days of fuss on social media, much of it denying that there was any safeguarding aspect to the issue. All three examples show how schools can be attacked or criticised for carrying out their basic safeguarding responsibilities. Partly, this is about ideology. People with a progressive ideology of education want an excuse to attack “strict schools” and will look for examples to condemn. But to condemn schools in these cases requires an exceptional level of ignorance. None of these policies emerged from debates over school discipline. They were not something politicians argued over, either. Not one of these policies is controversial in schools. They have all grown out of concerns about safeguarding shared by all those genuinely engaged in education, whether progressive or traditionalist. And, as some of the examples here show, some of those concerns were prompted by the deaths of actual children.
It’s pointless to suggest this, but I will anyway: pundits who don’t understand the basics of what schools do, or why they do it, should stop attacking schools in the press or on social media. They are rarely even aware that what they are arguing against is normal safeguarding practice, not strict discipline. Their ill-informed opinions are more toxic than they realise.
That’s cigarette butts to anyone outside the UK.