Disruptive boys 'stopping rise in school standards'

Chief inspector points to challenges in classrooms posed by pupils lacking social skills and staff not being qualified to teach

A hard core of disruptive pupils is making a rise in school standards almost impossible, the chief inspector of schools in England warned yesterday.

Nearly all schools had to contend with a few pupils – mainly boys – who had no social skills, whose language and behaviour was offensive and who "show little or no understanding of how to behave sensibly", David Bell concluded in his first annual report since taking over as head of Ofsted last May.

Mr Bell also said that three out of 10 teachers must improve the quality of their lessons if standards were to keep rising.

Although 70 per cent of teaching was now judged to be good or better, 4 per cent was still unsatisfactory, with 26 per cent merely satisfactory. Mr Bell questioned whether "satisfactory is now good enough, given the demands of pupils and the rising expectations from wider society".

The problem had been aggravated by the increasing number of teachers expected to teach subjects in which they had not been trained, he added. Mismatches between the skills of teachers and the lessons they were expected to deliver rose by almost a third last year, from 18 per cent in 2000-01 to 23 per cent in 2001-02 in secondary schools, inspectors found.

Mr Bell was particularly concerned about boys' ability to read and write, with a quarter of pupils – many of them boys – not reaching the expected standard by the age of 11. "More strikingly, nearly half of boys fail to reach the required standard in writing," he said. "That means they go to secondary school without reaching the national expectation for 11-year-olds. This is a major issue as a failure to acquire basic skills impedes future progress."

Good behaviour was clearly linked to good teaching and well-planned lessons, Mr Bell said. "We should not see dealing with behaviour as some sort of control and discipline issue in isolation," he warned. "We should see it as something to be controlled by the way that teachers teach."

Damian Green, the Conservative education spokesman, said the report painted "a darker picture than previous reports of life in our schools. It is increasingly clear that the less academic are let down by current education policies, and that the gap between the best and the worst is getting wider," he said. "Discipline is a huge and continuing problem in too many of our schools."

David Hart, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said parents were to blame for their children's behaviour. "Of course, boys' underachievement, rates of attendance and a rising tide of disruptive behaviour must be tackled," he said. "But the responsibility for this often lies with poor parenting."

Doug McAvoy, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, warned that the continuing teacher shortage was resulting in unqualified adults being forced to take classes. He said: "Such practices deny children the education they deserve."

Headmaster highlights parents' role

Three years ago, Islington Arts and Media School (IAMS) in Finsbury Park was struggling to shake off its reputation for pupil violence after a classroom dispute led to gang warfare on the streets of north London.

But the school was named on an Ofsted "roll of honour" yesterday for its efforts to instil discipline, which led Ofsted to remove it from a list of failing schools last year.

Richard Ewen, the headteacher since September 2000, said "with the right strategies" even difficult students could be reformed. Parents played a crucial role, he added. "I have always challenged the notion that parents in some way condone the bad behaviour of their children."