At Caldicot School, near Newport in south Wales, parents of unruly pupils are asked to sit at the back of the classroom to witness their children’s behaviour. If it sounds excruciatingly embarrassing for the teenager, it is intended to be.
Yet the tactics used by the head teacher, Alun Ebenezer — once dubbed the “headmaster from hell” for his tough discipline — appear to be working.
Since he took over the struggling 1,300-pupil school in June last year and introduced new rules such as weekend detentions, GCSE grades have improved, attendance is up and exclusions are down.
In October 2023, behaviour was so out of control that teachers staged walkouts and a list was handed to management with the names of pupils some staff saidthey refused to teach. As many as 100 truanting pupils were said to wander the corridors during lessons.
Ebenezer, 50, was brought in to turn it round and, in one of his first acts, clamped down on school uniform infringements, excluding children from lessons who refused to comply with the policy. This attracted the ire of parents: one mother complained to local media that her daughter had been kept in a “holding pen” in school over the length of her skirt, before being sent home.