A leading education academic says Australia’s classrooms are becoming increasingly disruptive and student’s mental health is suffering for it. 

Rates of disruption and challenging student behaviour in Australian classrooms are on the rise according to research from the University. As a result, they say students are also missing out on learning time and their academic achievement is negatively impacted 

“Research suggests that students who display disruptive or challenging behaviour at school are more likely to fall behind academically, and the students who are behind academically may be at risk of developing disruptive or challenging behaviour” said Dr. Erin Leif, Senior Lecturer in the School of Educational Psychology & Counselling, Faculty of Education, Monash University. 

“Experiencing academic and behavioural challenges at school may place students at an increased risk for social and emotional challenges such as anxiety, depression, peer rejection, and social isolation”.  

Federal Parliament is currently investigating the problem through its senate inquiry into “The issue of increasing disruption in Australian school classrooms” due to report by July 2023.  

“We note reports that there is a wide range of disorderly behaviour and disturbance in classrooms, ranging from small disruptions to more serious behaviours that endanger the safety of kids and school workers”, The Australian Council of State Schools wrote in its submission to the Inquiry.

It pointed to a range of causes including “trauma, bullying, poor motivation, difficulty in understanding, tiredness, competing curriculum priorities and the ever-present cycles of assessment”.

The Council noted that “Students who are not neurotypical will often express frustration through behaviour”. 

Not everyone agrees

However, Stewart Vidler Principal of Coonamble High School told the Western Plains App that he thinks the idea that students are becoming more disruptive than previous generations may not necessarily be true.

But he argues this generation of students has more challenges than any other to maintain attention in class – and the cause of that should come as no surprise; technology. 

“How do you regulate yourself when you are connected 24 hours a day and can communicate with so many people in an instant, no generation has ever dealt with this before,” Vidler told the Western Plains App.  

Image: The Conversation. 

“The cleverest people in the world are being hired by new media companies to grab our attention and they are so damn good at it. So how does a young person keep a sense of who they are and how they relate to their family and friends with all this going on?"

"We’ve gone for the phones in pouches policy where we ask kids to keep their phones in their pouches during the day and then it gets unlocked at the end of the school day”. 

The newly-elected NSW Labor Party is following up on their election promise to extend the mobile phone ban in public schools in NSW from primary to high school students.

Meanwhile, the State Education Department told the Western Plains App their focus remains on dealing with more traditional forms of classroom disruption – from the students themselves.

“Last year, we strengthened the Student Behaviour Policy and Procedures to enable schools to better manage a range of behavioural issues and to minimise the education lost for students who face a range of disadvantages including students with disability” a department spokesperson said. 

The stakes are high according to Dr. Leif from Monash University who says that disruptive classrooms are contributing to teacher burnout and a teacher shortage. 

“Creating multi-disciplinary teams within schools to explore the underlying causes of student disruption and to develop educational interventions to support improved student behaviour may be a useful first step in addressing this problem,” she said.