Are there “zero-tolerance” or “no excuses” schools? Part 1

One feature of recent discourse about education is the use of references to “zero-tolerance” or “no excuses” schools. These terms are used as if everyone knows what they mean and which schools they refer to. Those using the terms often appear to be assuming that they refer to schools that are either known to be a problem, or should be recognised as such.

The use of the phrase “Zero-tolerance” about schools seems to have begun with American schools using it with regard to drugs and weapons. If this were still the definition, then few British schools would let parents know they were anything other than “zero-tolerance”. The other label – “No Excuses” – was the title of a book about schools in the US that achieved good results with Latino and black pupils. The use of the phrase in this context seemed as much to do with expectations of learning for those pupils as behaviour.

However, going back ten years or more, to the start of Edutwitter and the burst of teacher blogging in the early 2010s, there were a number of us who worked in schools who wished to describe how rules were often not enforced. In the name of “inclusion” or “building relationships” teachers were discouraged from enforcing rules, and often even told that issuing sanctions was an indicator of being a poor teacher. “Zero-tolerance” and “no excuses” seemed like reasonable terms to describe schools which actually expected teachers to enforce a shared set of rules.

I can find an example of me using the term “zero tolerance” that way in 2012:

It is now much more common to hear people recommend zero-tolerance discipline policies (i.e. actually punishing kids when they do something wrong) and there are celebrated success stories where such an approach has been taken, of which Mossbourne Academy is the most famous.

I couldn’t find any example of anything more recent where I used that term approvingly. However, I have used “no excuses” more recently. In 2017, I used it similarly to how I had used “zero-tolerance”.

 I would argue that a “no excuses” school, with its clear rules and routines actually does more to draw boundaries around teachers’ authority, than the “excuses” school, where the rules and sanctions are made up according to the whim and status of the teacher, and emotional manipulation is considered preferable to the threat of punishment.

I can’t rule out the possibility that I was using the phrases in an esoteric or unusual way, but it seemed to make sense and be understood. The debate about behaviour in English schools was frequently between people who are working in schools arguing over whether the rules should be enforced or not. Compliance and obedience were seen as negatives. Perhaps they still are, but I can’t remember the last time I encountered that attitude within a school. These days, I wouldn’t use either of the terms “zero-tolerance” or “no excuses”. While I don’t want to suggest for a second that schools are consistent in practice, a certain consistency of philosophy now seems common in English secondary schools. Schools often have: centralised detentions; leaders who say “what you permit you promote”, and an acceptance of the principle that behaviour is a whole school responsibility, rather than a matter of whether individual class teachers have “good relationships”. There are still people who are loudly opposed to the enforcement of rules, but they usually don’t work in schools, and they often cannot articulate what exactly it is that they want. If they do use terms like “zero-tolerance” and “no excuses” they are often unclear as to what they mean by them.

Recently I have seen some examples of people using those terms in ways that I wouldn’t have used them.

Teaching union calls zero-tolerance school policies ‘inhumane’

A teaching union has described increasingly draconian behaviour policies in schools in England as “inhumane” and “damaging to pupil mental health”.

The National Education Union (NEU), which is holding its annual conference in Liverpool this week, said zero-tolerance approaches to discipline were resulting in schoolchildren spending inappropriate and harmful amounts of time in isolation.

Anna Wolmuth, a teacher from Islington, north London, told the conference: “While classrooms may be calm, the referral rooms are full of Send [special educational needs and disability] pupils and pupils with things going on at home.

‘We’re always there for them’: is the tide turning against zero-tolerance in UK schools?

…the prevailing wisdom of the past decade, by which high-profile schools celebrate the virtues of a “zero tolerance” or no-excuses discipline policy, sometimes linked to a seemingly cruel school culture and high numbers of exclusions.

In recent years details have leaked out of very successful schools using approaches that reduced children to tears, with some students, according to England’s children’s commissioner, Anne Longfield, spending days in isolation booths. .

Behaviour: We must say no to ‘no excuses’

The ‘no excuses’, zero tolerance approach to behaviour and discipline is shown to be a failed model and should now be thrown out by schools – for good – says Matt Ward

There is a growing trend in UK schools towards a “no excuses” style of behaviour management that disturbs me. It is an approach that has been imported from the US’s zero tolerance system.

“Zero tolerance” refers to behaviour management policies that seek to punish all offences severely, no matter how minor. Growing out of the gun violence tragedies in US schools in the early 1990s, any perceived threat-making by students resulted in automatic and permanent expulsions.

Before long, zero tolerance was casting its net further afield, and came to involve severe reactions to minor as well as major incidents, treating both with equal severity so as to “send a message” to any potential violators. But it has proved to be a huge over-reaction.

The discussion here seems to be of the severity and disproportionality of sanctions, and whether they should apply to all children, rather than whether rules should be enforced in the first place. This reflects the different debates we now have about behaviour. They are much less likely to be about whether rules should be enforced, they are likely to be about one of the following:

1. What the rules should be.
2. Which sanctions are appropriate.
3. Whether pupils with SEND should have to follow the rules.

However, I believe that in these discussions, the terms “zero tolerance” and “no excuses” are likely to be misleading.

I will explain how in Part 2.

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