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At the chalkface: The boys at the back

Senior leadership Teaching staff
I never really taught those “boys at the back”. They tolerated me. We had a benign truce. They larked about and went back to their culture. We must no longer deny it – but I’m rather afraid we will.

The boys at the back are larking about, winding you up, giving you migraine, disrupting the class and expending their sometimes Neanderthal, sometimes sharp wit on anything but their studies. Spreading the Damage. They know it. They’ve been doing it forever.

So we don’t really need yet another study by the Sutton Trust to tell us that the working class, especially the boys, is failing all ends up. We know. It’s why middle class parents pull their children out, why schools cleanse the 11th years, and probably the most common reason why teachers quit. Your liberal nerves are shot.

Such an intractable problem needs more than another dull report.

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