Devon Schools To Keep Discipline US-Style

Eighty schools across Devon, Plymouth and Torbay are to follow an American programme to improve discipline in the classroom and boost children's well-being.

The Incredible Years Teacher Classroom Management (TCM) course will run from September.

It's claimed the course has the potential to transform the classroom experience for both pupils and teachers, reduce the number of exclusions from school, assist the most vulnerable children in our society and provide cost-savings by reducing demands on educational support and mental health services.

And researchers from The Peninsula College and Exeter University will following the progress of children over the next five years.

They'll check whether teachers using the programme improve a child’s socio-emotional well-being; his or her academic attainment; the teacher’s emotional well-being; and the teacher’s belief that they are able to manage behaviour in the classroom more effectively and less stressfully.

One teacher who took part in the initial feasibility study was Ruth Dixon from Haywards Primary School in Crediton, Devon.

 She's been talking to our reporter Wendy Buckingham  CLICK HERE 

Dr. Tamsin Ford, Clinical Senior Lecturer at Peninsula. She said: “Our initial study showed that TCM has the potential to be a powerful and effective tool in education in the UK: by taking that forward into a larger study we hope to be able to draw conclusions that will be of benefit to teachers, their pupils and their parents. 

"Certainly TCM could well be the catalyst for ways of working that support the most vulnerable children in our society within the education system and which motivate and empower teachers. Not only would this be a worthwhile investment in human terms, but could also result in financial savings through better teacher retention and decreased demands on educational support and mental health services.”