Recent reports of behaviour policies being introduced into schools, enforcing silence on corridors at lesson-changeover have led to much debate about the purpose of schools, the nature of student communication, the needs of individuals and the tension between regulations and individual freedoms.
At the Achievement for All Conference in October 2018, a panellist called this kind of regulatory culture into question by asking the audience to consider the notion of ‘zero tolerance’ and what that might mean for the ethos and workings of a school. It led me to ask a question which is normally the preserve of my husband, an engineer: how much tolerance is there in this system? By this I mean, in an engineering sense, what is the permissible limit or where are the limits of variation? If engineers can work with tolerance in their work, where measurements are precise to a millimetre, surely schools, with all their human variations, don’t have to resort to a tolerance level of zero?
As a teacher I have certainly been guilty of using the phrase ‘zero tolerance’ in my classes when I wanted to make it clear that I was insisting on a particular standard of behaviour, level of noise or expectation of work rate. It meant that I would make no exceptions. The standard was expected of all. Cross the line and you would expect to feel the consequences.
Considering the wording of this phrase, though, as a whole school ethos, filled me with dread. Zero … tolerance. Nil. Nada. Nichts. None at all. Not if your parent, sibling, friend or grandparent had just had a nasty diagnosis or you were feeling dizzy and sick or you absolutely needed the loo. Zero tolerance means there is no scope for individual need. No point in asking if you want to appeal for special consideration (even on this one and maybe only occasion). It’s dehumanising and demeaning. It almost says ‘don’t bother looking me in the eye because you won’t get any clemency from me – no human response will be forthcoming’.
Unlike last week, when the Education Select Committee interviewed an actual robot to try to learn from it about how artificial intelligence might be of use in schools, this week they took evidence from very human experts in the field of SEN. They heard about a system which is under great strain, trying to provide adequate educational facilities and services to individuals on the SEND spectrum.1
In this meeting some of the intolerant inadequacies of the system were unearthed.