Whilst listening to BBC Radio 2 this morning, I heard the news that a significant number of schools are excluding under 7s for behaviour such as running off, biting and swearing at teachers and other pupils and how inspectors want this to change.
This is never good news for either the school, the child or the parents and, like school inspectors, I feel this needs to stop. Most children under 7 are unlikely to understand that what they are doing is wrong; yet the schools don’t appear to be dealing with this and instead exclude them.
There are a number of problems this causes: firstly, the child looses out on a part of their education and means that when they return to school they are behind. Secondly… would a child of that age see an exclusion (not being allowed to go to school) as a reward for their behaviour?
What schools should be doing is dealing with this behaviour in a way that is appropriate for the child’s age. They need to learn the difference between right and wrong, not be (effectively) rewarded for bad behaviour.
If you want to read about this topic, visit the BBC News website. The photo was created by Flickr member “grazulis” and has been used under a Creative Commons license.
