EVALUACIÓN DEL PROYECTO

The term ‘enablers’ as referred to in this section identifies the inputs that allow board members to make their decisions with some ease. They cluster around the perception regarding the directions in the guidelines, and their ease of use as they are applied in a discipline situation. The following comment was made that:

I think it’s a very easy process; basically, the parents rely on us to make a decision, and basically what we’re supposed to look at is the circumstances, and then you would look to see where this fits in with the grounds for suspension, so… we’ve got, you know, continued disobedience, [or being a harmful example to others] … So you choose in between those two, and that’s probably very easy, I don’t have any difficulty in making that decision. Leading up to that point is the hard part, yeah. (I,LD,P)

In commenting in this way the principal is referring to what transpires on a day to day basis with the student/s in question as their behaviour often escalates until they are brought before the principal who suspends them, prior to the discipline committee meeting to decide whether or not to continue the suspension or take a harder line such as to exclude or expel.

For the board at Eastside the accuracy of the process put in place by the principal (according to the guidelines laid down by the MoE) leading up to the disciplinary meeting was considered to be the most enabling part of the process of suspending or excluding a student. Alongside that board members also commented:

That it really depends how well that’s been [put together], in terms of a trail of paperwork, the investigation that starts from day one, what were the measures that were put in place leading up to the second offence, then the third, all the way to that [disciplinary] meeting.(FG,LD,PCT)

The interview with the chair of Southside secondary school opened with him talking about the approach his school takes with the boys who present with behaviour problems. He discussed the paternalistic approach the senior management team take and the way that he knows an enormous amount of effort has been put in by senior staff to help the boys get back on track before they are brought before the board. He credits the pastoral approach taken by the school for the relatively low incidence of disciplinary board hearings. He went on to say:

We certainly have a lot of trust in the process, and in the investigation of the incident that got us there, and all the incidents previously, because very rarely do we see a situation where there’s just one incident – usually, the boys coming in front of us have got a pretty long history, and there’s just been one thing that’s tipped them over the edge. (I,HD,BC)

The Chair continued to speak about something he found personally helpful (he credited it as being a deciding factor), and that was to consider the social group that the student belonged to. He suggests that it is the social combination of some boys that creates the conditions for their misbehaviour. He spoke of a couple of cases where he felt that the best option was to exclude the student as he describes in the following excerpt:

I can think of some cases where that was just a situation where a student had just built a reputation with their friends as someone who was just constantly disruptive in class, and that had been their expectation, he had to live up to it, and nothing Bill (not his real name) could do would deter him; so I reached the conclusion that, for that boy, the only possible hope was for him to go to another school and start again, and not paint himself as the troublemaker in the class. So yeah, a lot of decisions we’ve made, that social context, and a break from that, has been pretty important in that decision. (I,HD,BC)

This response appears to be a departure from the other respondents in so far as he has used his own judgement and perception of what has contributed to a situation leading up to a discipline committee meeting rather than relying on the collective decision making process that a board enacts as part of the disciplinary process.

For the board of Westside, the school having its policies in place was most important. They said that if there was a problem with the policy they would bring it to the attention of the principal to deal with but as yet (in this board’s time) there has not been any necessity to apply the process outlined in the policy. I am assuming that the policy being referred to by the board is based on the guidelines issued by the MoE. Copies of the discipline policies I obtained from each of the represented schools referred to the guidelines from MoE along with a separate discipline process that was implemented by teachers during teaching and non-teaching times during the school day. Later in this section the review of discipline policies obtained from each of the schools is discussed. What was alluded to by members of Westside was the notion that difficult students are moved on with a quiet word in the ear:

Well, quite often, with parents, not at this school, another school I was at, we knew, who started going down that line, and it’s a case of, if this happens again, these are the steps that we’ll be following, the parents up and move them to another school anyway, I think it gives them a chance of a fresh start, I guess. (FG,LD,PCT)

The comment was also made by some board members that this also allowed the student and family another six months or so respite from the attention of the ‘system’ before that student possibly starting playing up again. One could potentially infer that the school was simply passing off its problem for someone else to deal with. What was agreed was that the type of offence or level of the act that a student committed does allow for a more clear-cut process to be used, and they all agreed that in that instance the Ministry’s guidelines and the Act itself provided a framework for how the board’s discipline committee was to deal with what had occurred.

The final comment from the board chair of Northside was similar to other responses and shows that the guidelines produced by the MoE are quite robust in providing an initial process for the principal and then the board to follow as can be seen here:

Well, I think it’s quite easy, having a format to follow, so, you know, there are quite strong guidelines about suspension and expulsion, and how it should be managed; even in terms of what the principal has to do, ‘cause she’s got to get

the documents to the parents and all that sort of thing, so I think having a process to follow is very good. (I,HD,BC)

The chair also mentioned that this process is a good one for new board members and those who have not been on a disciplinary committee before as it makes it easier for them too.