Schools brace for outbreak of Covid-hit unruly pupils

Teachers are bracing themselves for surging delinquency next month as pupils most affected by Covid home-schooling begin the peak school years for bad behaviour.

Experts have warned there could be a ‘perfect storm’ as the age groups which have already seen a spike in exclusions and suspensions enter their early teens.

Children who missed crucial stages of their primary schooling during lockdowns in 2020 and 2021 will begin years 9 and 10 in secondary school next week.

The same cohort has already displayed poor behaviour earlier in their schooling, according to official statistics.

Now there are concerns that discipline problems attributed to home-schooling at a crucial point in their development will intensify as they attain the ages of 13 to 15, when classroom disruption traditionally peaks.

Children who missed crucial stages of their primary schooling during lockdowns in 2020 and 2021 will begin years 9 and 10 in secondary school next week (stock image)

General secretary of the NASUWT teaching union Patrick Roach said there was ‘no doubt’ that bad behaviour had escalated since the pandemic.

There could be worse to come, he told the Guardian, after ‘more and more teachers reported being sworn at, threatened, shoved, kicked, bitten or punched and attacked by pupils carrying weapons’.

The proportion of year 7 state school pupils who received at least one suspension rose from 3.5 per cent in the year before the pandemic to 5.5 per cent in 2022-23, data from the Department for Education (DfE) has shown.

In year 8, suspensions rose from 5.5 per cent to more than 8 per cent.

More girls are getting into trouble at school since Covid lockdowns, the data shows, with 1,000 additional female exclusions in 2022-23 compared with 2018-19.

Andrew Smith, a secondary school teacher and blogger who identified the rising trends, told the Guardian: ‘Next year’s year 9s and year 10s could be the most challenging for many years.

General secretary of the NASUWT teaching union Patrick Roach, pictured in February 2023, said there was ‘no doubt’ that bad behaviour had escalated since the pandemic

‘However, that may depend on whether schools have successfully addressed the behaviour of those pupils in the years they have already been at secondary school.’ 

However, Tom Bennett, a DfE adviser on behaviour management, said the prospect of more indiscipline among older pupils was ‘possible but not certain’.

‘I would speculate that the experience of home-schooling during lockdown may well be responsible for the deterioration of some social skills which, like truancy, will be disproportionately concentrated in sub-groups who were already most at risk of misbehaving,’ he said.

‘But it doesn’t guarantee that they will remain so chaotic for ever.

‘They could, for instance, readjust to the socialising effect of being back at school.

‘On the other hand, the effect may well be sustainable, and we may well see a bubble move up and create, with the effects of adolescence, a perfect storm.’

Experts have warned there could be a ‘perfect storm’ as the age groups which have already seen a spike in exclusions and suspensions enter their early teens (stock image)

A DfE spokesman said: ‘The rising number of school suspensions and permanent exclusions are shocking, and show the massive scale of disruptive behaviour that has developed in schools across the country in recent years, harming the life chances of children.

‘We are determined to get to grips with the causes of poor behaviour: we’ve already committed to providing access to specialist mental health professionals in every school, introducing free breakfast clubs in every primary school and ensuring earlier intervention in mainstream schools for pupils with special needs.’

A government source said: ‘This government will do the hard yards and get to the root of much of the bad behaviour blighting our schools with a support-first approach that gets control of our classrooms once again.’ end