EDUCATION: School suspensions violate children's human rights, say experts

Teachers who give time-outs and suspensions to “bad” students while rewarding “good” ones with smiley face stickers may be robbing children of their rights to dignity and an education, a leading child behaviour expert has said.

 

The University of South Australia’s Dr Anna Sullivan made the comments ahead of a national child behaviour summit she has co-organised, and said the way teachers disciplined children was sometimes outdated and may breach the international convention on the rights of the child.

 

The national children’s commissioner in Australia, Megan Mitchell, will deliver the summit’s keynote lecture, speaking on the human rights of children in schools.

 

Sullivan believes the right of children to be treated with dignity should be key to managing behavioural problems and hoped the summit would lead to new ideas about discipline being promoted and used in policy.

 

“There was a big push in the 1980s and 1990s for clear rules around the rights of the teacher as well as the rights of the child, and what we’re saying is it’s time to rethink some approaches to discipline that emerged during that time,” Sullivan, a senior lecturer in the university’s education department, said.

 

“Using measures like putting a happy face next to the names of good kids and a sad face next to bad ones is not very dignified, yet I think rewards systems like that have been fairly prevalent in schools.”

 

She said sending children away from their peers for a time-out or suspending them from school – although usually occurring after several warnings had been given and other measures had been tried – disconnected them from learning and did nothing to get to the root of their problems.

 

While she did not entirely oppose those measures, she said they definitely shouldn’t be used as a first-line approach.

 

“In school sometimes kids aren’t treated well. They may be yelled at or embarrassed,” Sullivan, an expert in learning environments, said.

 

“Or maybe they got detention because they were late, but the reason they are late is because mum slept in and didn’t drive them to school on time, or something is going on at home.

 

“So we’re saying we need to think about the way we support all kids and how rights come into that.

 

“And every child should have a right to learn. My comments are about humanising what happens in schools and and having a rethink of children and their rights.”

 

Sullivan said her comments ahead of the summit were “meant to be provocative”. But she added that her research had shown a whole-of-school approach to discipline worked, rather than individual teachers being left to discipline a particularly difficult child on their own.

 

“There are schools where all of the staff are involved in an individual child’s discipline rather than just their classroom teacher, and that seems to be effective.”

 

Behaviour also improved when teachers worked with the child to find solutions to problems and resolve their conflict because it gave the child a feeling of control, she said.

 

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child includes the principle that children should have a say in decisions made by adults that affect them, and that their opinions be taken into account.

 

It also states: “Children have the right to an education. Discipline in schools should respect children’s human dignity.”