At Cecil and Nathan's comprehensive, where there is no after-school sport, there are regular fights between boys from rival schools and gangs.

These take place on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. At a nearby comprehensive attended by a 13-year-old called David, they kick off most Friday lunchtimes.

All three boys said the police were rarely called - and then usually only the day after a fight. 'The teachers are scared,' said David with contempt.

Shockingly, both these inner-city schools were passed as 'satisfactory' in their last Ofsted inspection reports.

In fact, Ofsted has branded nearly half the schools in the country 'satisfactory' or worse - so the scale of the problem is clear.

One assistant head shook his head and told me: 'All we're doing is containing the children and keeping them off the streets, and we're barely doing that.'

Last year, classroom disruption was running at record levels, with schools sending home 2,200 children every day.

As well as failing to teach them how to read and write properly, too many schools are failing to protect boys from low-income families, to socialise them and to open up the world to the brightest

More than 200,000 were expelled or suspended the year before for violent, threatening or aggressive behaviour directed at teachers or other pupils.

It is, of course, extremely hard to learn - or teach - in this kind of environment.

This is from one of Harriet Sergeant's recent articles in the Daily Mail.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Education

Comments (0) TrackBack (8)