One of the council's excuses is that they give us money to educate the kids, and if we exclude them they can claim it back. We can't send back that proportion of a teacher, or the heating bill, of course, but looked at in that way funding by pupil numbers isn't a great idea.
Punishments - well, I did have a cane at one time (1977ish) but refused to use it. We can detain, remove from lessons, internally exclude and externally exclude. We have Saturday detentions. We use reports and the computerised management system to monitor behaviour, especially that of 'noted' pupils. If they don't improve, parents are called in and there is a Pastoral Support Plan. Basically, it is impossible to remove a kid unless they have had a PSP and it has failed, unless they commit a gross offence, such as bringing a weapon into school, serious assault etc.
But that isn't the problem - it's quite easy to deal with serious misbehaviour. The problem is what we call low-level disruption, time wasting and energy sapping, draining away the education of the good kids in the class. A lot of it is attention-seeking by inadequate kids who come from poor (or impoverished) backgrounds with inadequate parents. Sometimes its understandable (I had to deal with a lad last week who had just seen his Gran die, he was a bit edgy and upset of course) but often there is only bad parenting, yoof culture, general dumbing down and erosion of standards amongst the least able to blame.
So much so that I'm looking to get early retirement this year. I still love it when all goes well, but I'm getting tired - and I want to survive to have some retirement in my shed!
