Pupils deserve discipline - Telegraph Last week, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released a report that showed Britain was slipping behind our global rivals on education. Now Sir Michael Wilshaw, Her Majesty's chief inspector of education, has identified one reason why this has happened: too many teachers are tolerating bad behaviour in the classroom. There is, he says, "a culture of casual acceptance of low-level disruption and poor attitudes to learning." This is hardly surprising. Since the Sixties, in deference to a child's supposed "right" to self-expression, some teachers have refused to instil discipline for philosophical reasons, while others have avoided doing so for fear of the legal consequences (or even a physical confrontation with an angry parent). The result: bad manners, pupils arriving late for class, constant chatter, obsessive texting - and it only takes one miscreant to ruin a day's work for everyone. Compare that situation to the one in Shanghai, China, which came top of the OECD's rankings. There, rules are strictly enforced and the teacher's word is final. It is not necessary for British teachers to tolerate bad behaviour. In 2011, the Government published sensible guidance that freed teachers to take action to control unruly pupils and gave heads the power to exclude the worst offenders. And although schools were told to operate a "no touch" policy, the guidance insisted that staff accused of using unreasonable force should not be automatically suspended. In other words, teachers already have the powers necessary to deal with this problem and should be encouraged to stamp their authority upon the classroom. Children need discipline; their future is jeopardised without it.