Spoilt Children 'Disrupt Schools' Says NUT Report

Primary schoolchildren spoilt by their parents can cause disruption in the classroom by repeating manipulative behaviour used at home, a report says.

Research for the National Union of Teachers (NUT) suggested a minority of children threw tantrums, swore and were physically aggressive.
NUT boss Steve Sinnott is calling for more advice for parents who struggle to say "no" to their children.

Cambridge University held 60 interviews with staff and pupils in 10 schools.

The report was released at the union's annual conference in Manchester.

It cited examples of children who stayed up to the early hours and played on violent computer games.

It described a mother who celebrated the fact she had been able to get her five-year-old to bed at 1am instead of his previous bedtime of 3am.

It also told of a seven-year-old who smashed up his Playstation in a tantrum, then spent a week pestering his mother until she bought him a new one.

The researchers said some parents simply could not say "no" when their children demanded televisions and computers in their bedrooms.

Others would do "anything to shut up their children just to get some peace", it said.

Mr Sinnott said the problem lay with parents who were struggling with little or no help to bring up their children in a heavily commercialised world.

He wants a ban on advertising aimed at children.

"Parents are trying to cope by indulging, or by over-indulging, their youngsters," he said.

This culture was spilling into school, making it more difficult for teachers to cope.

He said: "A youngster who is being trained at home to get their own way by throwing a tantrum - I think it is pretty easy to see the impact that would have in the classroom."

Poor behaviour among a significant minority of youngsters was being "modelled at home".

Mr Sinnott urged teachers and schools to give parents reasonable advice, but he warned they could not do it alone, and urged the government to tackle the commercialisation of culture head-on.

Research author Maurice Galeton said: "It is particularly acute where people are living in violent neighbourhoods.

"Very young parents in violent and deprived neighbourhoods without the network of support that others get ... [have] a huge level of stress in their lives."

One teacher told researchers that young children spent so long strapped into cots or baby bouncers that they were deprived of their natural stages of physical and emotional development.

Schools tried to compensate by providing equipment they could crawl through and activities involving positive touching.

"Motivating certain children, it was claimed, had become more difficult because by the time they come to school many of these children had become expert in manipulating adults," the report added.

The report also found that the methods schools used to deal with poor behaviour were not working.

Some used a system of rewards and penalties to encourage children, but they often led to those who behaved the worst winning rewards for doing very little.

"More difficult pupils will be rewarded for simply listening, or being polite to a classmate, whereas pupils whose behaviour is generally acceptable will have to do something exceptional to earn a credit," the report said.

Our thanks for this item to BBC News (Hannah Goff): bbc.co.uk/news