BAD behaviour at a Derby school has been halved – by playing classical music to unruly children.

Brian Walker, head of West Park School, has seen the improvement in behaviour among his pupils since he introduced two-hour detentions, complete with Verdi and Mozart.

Mr Walker also "names and shames" disruptive teenagers on video screens in the school.

And instead of handing out lines, pupils are forced to write out the poem Jerusalem, a favourite of Mr Walker's.

Four years ago, around 50 or 60 pupils at the Spondon school were losing lesson time to bad behaviour. Now that figure is nearer to a hard core of 20.

Mr Walker said of his "Bach to basics" detentions: "I try to pick music to suit the season such as oratorios at Easter, or even medieval plain-song near Christmas, and I can hear the groans as it starts but I always ensure the volume is high.

"Hopefully, I open their ears to an experience they don't normally have and it seems many of them don't want to have it again – so it's both educational and acts as a deterrent."

Pupils say they are not anxious to repeat the detention experience. One of them, Ryan, said: "Two hours for a school detention is a long time to sit in silence. You really don't want to go back there."

Fellow pupil Kieran said: "Last year was a nightmare. An hour of Mr Walker's music is a real killer."

Pupils who persistently break the rules are personally taken from classrooms by the senior leadership team for the detentions, which are held after school each Friday.

They are forced to listen to an hour of classical music such as Handel or Puccini, in total silence. Then they are shown educational DVDs, such as the history of maths, for 30 minutes, and finally they have half an hour to write up what they have learned.

In addition, naughty pupils' names and photographs are displayed on video screens as "disrupters of learning".

This year the school saw its best GCSE results and was one of only a couple to improve their grades in the city.

Mr Walker said: "We used to have detentions on a Saturday but a lack of parental support meant we had to rethink that and we came up with the two-hour Friday detention.

"Good pupil behaviour is critical to our success. So we introduced a new behaviour system, of which the detentions are a part, and the effect was transformational.

"The school's consequence system means showing pupils that making certain choices, such as behaving badly, impacts on others."

Pupils first get a warning but if their bad behaviour persists, they get a second warning and are required to write out the poem, Jerusalem, by 8.30am the next morning.

If their bad behaviour persists, one of a range of punishments follows such time in the training centre for serious incidents, withdrawal from lessons under personal supervision, or a detention.

Mr Walker said: "Detentions are always supervised by myself or the deputy head and are run to a precise regime of seating arrangements and total silence. My deputy prefers to take pupils through their times tables rather than a DVD in the second part of the two hours.

"By being involved I know who the scallywags are and it drives home the importance of what they have done.

"Data and pupil comments shows that these detentions are both a deterrent and a learning experience. It is also commonly acknowledged that classical music has a calming effect to the end of the week, which pupils have also said."

One pupil, Charlotte, who also plans to avoid any more detentions, said: "The music can be relaxing but you wouldn't want it too often."