I know it's been done to death but I don't think people realise how hard it is to work in a school!

Sounds horrific. I am in Ireland, work in an inner city disadvantaged school and have none of the above. Issues in the playground, yes, but only for a small percentage of students and quickly sorted. I hear of this behaviour in UK schools so often. What is going on?

Yes. I'm lunchtime playground supervision. Yes, the swearing is literally every single day, several times directly at me in an hour and a half (across the primary age range).

The punches and kicks are at least once a week, at me - dont even ask how many fights we break up between children.
The spitting fortunately less common for.me, only three times in this academic year . Fairly average school with a mix of children with different backgrounds.

A very good summary

I think retirement was probably best for everyone.

I think it does, when i was teaching, left early retired a few years ago....we had to battle to get one annoying little shit removed....had some stupid name like Dee Jay and had a swarm of outreach workers.....the whole theatre, he manipultated all of them..... to persuade us to keep him despite all the meetings and warnings.....finally got rid of him. The mum was also good at manupulating a whole team of staff and endless meetings for hours and hours. I guess she didnt want to discipline or deal with him.

I think that the nappy issue has a far bigger impact than people realise. In a school nursery the ratio is one adult to 13 children but now one of those adults is pretty much changing nappies or dealing with toileting all of the time.

Which means that the other adults can't work with a small group of children which is such an important and valuable part of nursery and reception.

It's also quite soul destroying to do all of that training and plan and set up lovely activities only to be changing nappies for hours.

We have 4 in nappies in reception. Not a huge amount but still enough to take a adult away from the class a fair amount of time.
When I started teaching all children had to be toilet trained and if there were special needs a parent had to come in and change them.

I honestly don't believe that every DC starts reception in nappies.

It's so odd to read this thread, where the majority agree that poor parenting is a main cause to the disruption and behaviour of pupils.

Yet in most threads where a poster complains about the behaviour of children outside of school, and outrage erupts in support of the parent.

Thread about someone complaining of poor behaviour in shops or restaurants, people need to appreciate how hard it is for the parent, how it's not their fault, how children will be children, how society nowadays doesn't value children any longer and how hard done by children are nowadays.

Duplicate this to children in parks, public transport, holiday places, their own gardens... It's no surprise that behaviour is bad at school.

Parents try so hard to engage in 'gentle discipling' that they forget how hard and exhausting discipling' children is, let alone when you have to spend the time and energy that gentle disciplining demand. Time and energy that mist parents don't have so that gentle disciplining becomes lazy disciplining.

Honestly the way things are going and kids are acting there won’t be anyone going into these roles in years
to Come.
Society is going to have real issues with employing teachers and police.
I certainly couldn’t be A teacher, as would refuse to teach anyone who treated me in the way described … I wouldn’t tolerate being called names and spat at… they’d have to sit in the heads office as they wouldn’t step foot in my class again.

Do you know how hard it is to get an EHCP? You can be as pushy as you like but they are incredibly difficult to get. Schools can apply and push, and do.

As far as I'm aware it looks bad on their Ofsted to expel children? They're supposed to magically transform Damian the omen children into perfect angels, which might make some sense for primary schools but it's completely unreasonable for secondary schools imo

But that's just it @Chickenuggetsticks the kids' parents won't do anything at all. Maybe confiscate their tech for a few hours if that.

My arse would have been sore for a week and I'd have been made to write an apology letter, not that I'd have sworn at a teacher in the first place.

I'm pretty sure that most people would know the difference between a Teacher and a Teaching Assistant but here we are...

@Josette77 teachers are paid and treated significantly better in Canada than the UK. DH is Canadian and he is shocked at what my mum (primary teacher) goes through for her job.

I'm pretty sure that teachers would once have known that the plural of diagnosis is diagnoses, not "diagnosis's."

@albertoross
Because, despite all the issues, the abuse- both verbal and sometimes physical, the hard work and emotional toil
, it can still be a wonderful job. But increasingly teachers and teaching assistants ARE leaving, we can't recruit either locally at the moment. Yes, the holidays are a bonus ( although TA posts are paid pro rata so most need to find some sort of work, especially in the summer holidays to compensate) but there comes a point for many where the issues outweigh the benefits. That's when people leave.

Then why do you do it? You really don't have to. It's ruining your kid's life

I don't think anyone thinks you have a cushy time but having the holidays off makes it a lot easier if you have kids

Don't do it then. No ones forcing you

It's not pushy parent ts who get ehcps. How do you get a ehcp? Can you buy one? No you can't. They are either issued by the LA or court ordered.

There's is no money for ehcps where I live. No one gets one. Dome parents accept that abd some don't. Buy there is no way to just aquire a ehcp without a SEN civil servant expert saying so.

That is so sad to read. So different from the UK I grew up in. It wasn't perfect by any means, but at least children respected their elders, especially teachers, and policemen!

A lot of church schools effectively select the nicest dc by insisting on church attendance. This means other schools get a bigger share of disruptive dc.

The culture of a school matters. Parents don't prepare dc well for school and expect the schools to do too much. A HT on Radio 4 suggested too many DC were getting EHC plans. The ones with pushy parents. Other dc don't get what they need so their needs are unmet and often they are in deprived areas so the schools struggle. Many need school adjustments but don't get them.

I do think most schools are good but the teaching profession in primary is largely female and they are working part time when they can. I do wonder if more men in a primary school would help.

We do do this. Take them to the HT, at least, but we don't suspend for it.

The bottom line is that (some of) the children don't care about being taken to the HT. Some don't care about suspensions. They come back and do it all over again.

There's nothing the HT can say or do that will change the behaviour.

Some of the children experience such shit homelives and are the products of such poor parenting that There's nothing we can do or say that will even touch them.

Not only that but we are seeing many children come through primary with trauma behaviours (from parenting) from parents who are, themselves, exhibiting trauma behaviours - especially poor emotional regulation. It's the whole 'children learn what they live' thing.

On the lower end of the social spectrum, there are a lot of families who see schools as the enemy; part of the establishment. And they will fight us every step of the way on everything.

At the other end, we are only teachers. People who weren't good enough at our chosen subjects to make it as a professional in that field. The those who can, do; those who can't, teach mentality. They seek to micromanage us.

Those attitudes are reflected in their children.

Then there are people who have made a lot of money in trades. People who outearn teachers by miles in skilled work they entered because they left school without meaningful qualifications. I have friends in this group so no issue with that. But, for some the attitude is that school is a waste of time. They did better than the teachers in life and the level of disrespect in some is off the scale. They literally talk to you like you're shit. In front of the children. And brag about it. I know that because sometimes the children will repeat what they say.

Of course, there are very many incredibly supportive parents across all groups but there are those who take pride in their children 'taking no shit' from their teachers.

And you see all of this reflected in MN threads.

Some of the children will come in and tell us they're going to get us sacked. That their parents are going to complain to ofsted and we'll get sacked. Not for serious transgressions but because things like keeping them in at break as a sanction or removing them from a classroom for persistent disruptive behaviour contravenes their rights according to the UN Rights of the Child (the right to have friends/get exercise and the right to an education respectively) And they can quote the relevant article numbers at you.

I have worked in primary and secondary as a TA. IME there was more extreme behaviour in primary. Those children were removed from mainstream before they got to secondary.

In primary I dealt with furniture being thrown, physical violence directed at staff andnother children, children climbing over bookcases and coat racks refusing to come down, broken windows, broken radiators etc. There were a small handful of children like that in pretty much every year group. Memorably, on one occasion parents were called to collect children that had been rampaging around school shouting obscenities at staff. The parents arrived with a group of friends all clutching cans of beer. It wasnt even lunchtime yet. I haven't had to deal with anything like that in secondary.

In secondary there are some physical fights between children but it's more constant disruptive behaviour. Children think teachers are being unreasonable asking them to stop talking while the teacher is talking to the class, they will argue back when asked to do/not do something, they will swear and walk out of the classroom, they will hide in the toilets and not go to class, they turn up late, they want to go to the toilet when they've just come in from break and argue with the teacher when they are told no. When they are allowed to go they disappear for 30 minutes. If there is a supply teacher they all do whatever they like and don't do any work. If they get a supply teacher who tries to teach them rather than just put a slide of instructions up all hell breaks loose. Then, when they are issued with consequences they will argue very convincingly that they didn't do it even when caught red handed. Sometimes adults in the school who weren't involved will believe them and remove the consequences. Parents inevitably do believe them and come into school raging that their little angel is being picked on by the teachers.

I watched a very good teacher break in front of me this week. Just ground down by the constant poor behaviour and every lesson being a battle. We had a particularly bad lesson and the teacher just broke. They will be leaving the profession at the end of term if they come back at all.

Sadly, with recruitment and retention being what it is, schools and teacher training can't be so choosy. I've seen some really terrible student teachers this year (one very good one too) and vacancies have been filled with not so great teachers. Lots of supply being used too. None of this helps the overall behaviour management in the school. The good teachers still do a good job managing behaviour in their classroom but it's a constant battle and really does wear them down.

I know that parents of children at the school have no idea how bad it really is because I know some of the parents. If you think your child's school is not like this, you may be wrong. I had no idea, as a parent, how bad the behaviour was in the primary school until I started working there.

Apparently, schools all across our city are really struggling with behaviour at the moment. IME it comes down to parents (across different backgrounds), outside influences (eg social media and a society that seems to be getting more entitled and selfish) and a curriculum that isn't appropriate for children that are struggling to learn so they become disengaged. There are other factors too, there's not one thing that we can fix and then it will all be OK. I do think there needs to be less pandering and more meaningful consequences though. I don't think we are doing children any favours thinking they can grow up behaving like that with no consequences.