Cyberbullying, vaping, revenge porn, smartphone addiction… College staff are now having to deal with types of anti-social behaviour that were practically unheard of just a decade ago.
Across England, colleges are reporting a rise in challenging behaviour, particularly among their first-year 16-19 students.
While the immediate impact of Covid has gone away, it has left behind a trail of disaffected young people, who had stopped attending school regularly by the time they took their GCSEs. School absence and exclusion rates for year 11s last year rocketed to record levels, DfE data shows.
More than three-quarters (77 per cent) of college student support staff believe that their students felt more dissatisfaction with wider society in 2023 than in previous years, a survey conducted exclusively for FE Week of The National Association for Managers of Student Services’ members reveals. Almost the same share (71 per cent) believe that this disaffection has contributed to a rise in challenging behaviour.
