After every half term, detention rooms become crammed and you'll find year heads frowning, wondering how to contain the pestilence of misbehaviour, as pupils continue to test boundaries.

Continuous boundary testing comes in many forms, including interruption, chatting and simple disobedience, as the minority clamour for attention, determined to have their way. Diligent students feel frustrated and silent plodders go unnoticed, since the teacher cannot give them the attention they need because he's applying the latest behaviour-management techniques to control the defiant few.

Teachers can be helpless against insults, threats and even racial abuse – especially supply teachers, who are sometimes offered little support. Outstanding schools are often regarded as such because they support teachers. A maxim in one school I worked in, which prided itself on effectively supporting teachers, was: “If a student is misbehaving, it’s not your fault.” Senior staff roamed the classrooms, ready to escort away rude miscreants.

Conversely, a common maxim of today’s schools is that you cannot be a good teacher unless you know how to manage the behaviour of students in a class.

Sir Michael Wilshaw says there is tolerance "for a culture of casual acceptance of low-level disruption" – and that students are being allowed too much time to settle at the beginning of class. Where has he been? Most teachers relish the opportunity to teach in a silent classroom, but what can they do in the face of apathetic students and a lack of sufficient deterrents, where hardly anyone is expelled?

In some schools pupils can be given up to six warnings before receiving a long detention. However, I doubt such warnings exist in private schools, free from government constraints. It is either cooperate or you’re out on your ear.

With a lack of sufficient deterrents in most schools, a game of cat and mouse inevitably ensues, especially when students are aware of their rights. I sometimes wonder if I am being disciplined, as students tell me “you can’t do this” or “you can’t do that”. Or when, on occasions, I have been called in by sympathetic year heads, who are obliged to investigate false claims that I had insulted or even got physical with students. These complaints usually come after I have issued a detention. The so-called frightened students reappear in my class, smiling.

Teachers now live in a climate of fear, with their hands tied, and students are never named or ashamed. You risk being fined or imprisoned if you abuse a policeman or transport worker – why can’t teachers be offered the same protection?

As a teacher’s dignity is being eroded, it is no surprise that there is a shortage of teachers in the UK. Some British teachers flourish abroad, where they can concentrate on teaching, rather than behaviour management. Instead of "testing, testing", if only there was a culture of "warning, suspension, expulsion", then the boundaries would be drawn and the pestilent few would be powerless.

The writer is an MFL teacher working in London

Tell us what keeps you awake at night; email: chloe.darracott-cankovic@tesglobal.com

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