Thus prepared, I was sent to an inner-city comprehensive where 37 per cent of the pupils qualify for free school meals and 42 per cent of the pupils have special educational needs. What I did not anticipate, though, was that the ethos of the school would actively militate against ensuring good discipline. The senior leadership team openly states their dislike of "complicit" pupils. As a result, the head walks the corridors with all of the authority of a dinner lady. In the staff room we trade stories of the complete lack of respect pupils have for our leader: "I saw him knocked over by two year nines!"; "Bradley in year 11 told him to fuck off, and walked away blowing kisses!" At a staff training evening, the head offered a defence of his outlook. He drew the hysterical moral equivalence between a compliant student and an obedient German soldier in Hitler's army. For him, good behaviour is oppression, strictness akin to fascism. 

According to the doctrine of child-centred education, we teachers should prevent misbehaviour by honing our lessons and teaching style. We are endlessly told that a good teacher is tough on the causes of misbehaviour, not misbehaviour itself. In practice, this translates into placating pupils and never really pushing them to achieve. Exhaustive efforts are made in schools to introduce new "behaviour management solutions". Fast-paced lessons; interventions; CCTV surveillance; behaviour tracking; child therapists; more assessment; less assessment; motivational training; bribes; even bouncers: a constant merry-go-round of "cutting edge" methods trying in vain to compensate for the abdication of authority in schools.

The paradox which afflicts schools such as mine is that when teachers are relaxed on discipline, discipline becomes their overriding concern. In strict schools where rules are consistently enforced, pupils know the expectations for their behaviour and teachers can focus on teaching. In schools where discipline is relaxed, ensuring good behaviour becomes an all-consuming battle. In my car journey home with two other teachers, behaviour dominates our discussions. We rarely get round to sharing stories of actually teaching as we are so preoccupied with getting the pupils to sit down, stop talking, open their books, and pick up a pen. I can only dream about what I could achieve with my pupils if we were in a school where good behaviour was the norm, not the exception. Thankfully, it seems that a corner is being turned. The government is keen to address not just the structure but the culture of state schooling. In 2007, David Cameron attacked the educational orthodoxies which were a "hangover from the 1960s" and said discipline was a key ingredient for successful schools. The proposed reforms to the Ofsted inspection process are going to reflect this, with a quarter of school inspections being dedicated to school ethos and behaviour.