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

Long time TA - and I’m done for all the reasons discussed here. I just can’t do it anymore so will be leaving in July. Education is a binfire and no one is listening.

So so difficult to deal with. There needs to be a societal shift back to some discipline.

Friends Dd exhibiting some challenging behaviour has a diagnosis - her private school kicked her out so fast her feet didn’t touch the floor. No way could she have been excluded like that from a state school. Awful for her she’s nowhere to go now.

There should be CCTV and body cameras for teachers.

It's not acceptable behaviour from children or parents. We need a low tolerances to abuse

I don't think that working in a school is any harder than many other demanding professional roles.

When TAs who are being paid minimum wage for being sworn at/kicked and punched don’t want to do it any more, we have a problem.

I wonder which other ‘demanding professional’ roles you are comparing it to?

From what I've heard private school is worse!

This is out-of-touch nonsense.

This kind of comment is so short sighted.

What is it that you don’t understand? There is a retention and recruitment crisis. Schools can’t recruit staff. Children being taught by untrained staff - this is their education and arguably one of the most important periods of their lives, being decimated unless you can afford private and that’s not much better in some cases. Shouting ‘just leave then’ to staff telling you that schools are in crisis only worsens an already dire situation.

There needs to be an absolute shift in parental responsibility for their children’s behaviour in school and PROPER funding and support for children with challenges.

@user4692821 I absolutely agree. It is a nightmare. I think many parents would be absolutely mortified and frankly sickened to actually see what classrooms are like nowadays. And I quite agree just wait till these kids hit the workforce.

I work in a high school, with the more challenging contingent. I don't get abuse but honestly, these teens will argue that they haven't done something until they're blue in the face. Even when they're banged to rights! Their refusal to take any kind of responsibility is one of the most frustrating elements of my job.
And it stems from their daftie parents.

Sweary Johnny will stay Sweary Johnny no matter what we do, frankly

That sounds awful.

I agree that parenting is often part of the problem BUT I also blame the government/local authority.

What should happen, in my opinion, is there should be consequences for both the children and the parents for this behaviour. There is no support for schools to suspend/ expel pupils - it's all about that not being in their best interests, never mind the best interests of staff and other pupils!

There's an increased assumption that schools should teach everything too - including potty training, eating with a knife and fork, manners, getting dressed - these are things that should have been taught at home before the child started school. How can we be expected to teach actual lessons to 30 kids if we also have 30 nappies to change!

You should care. What happens to sweary little 7 year old Johny? Does he disappear off the face of the earth? Or does he grow up with no chance of ever working outside of society? Would want to bump into adult him?

There’s a recruitment and retention crisis now. Imagine how much worse that crisis will become in the coming years?

Who cares. All that matters is the kids who want to learn, can.

But when you’re making ‘easy adjustments’ for 10 children it’s suddenly neither easy nor basic is it? Which other ‘professional environment’ are you punched, kicked and spat at? You sound like one of the melt parents being discussed on this thread to be honest.

I work in a generally tough school. Visitors always comment on how well behaved and polite the children are. And it's true, they are lovely. But there are certainly one or two in each class who are a " challenge" And no, it's not usually the ones with SEN, they can be the politest, sweetest children ( with the odd table-throwing exception). It's the ones generally with " benign neglectful" parents, who are left to pretty much do as and what they like, don't have rules and boundaries and are treated like little " friends" rather than children. We have a FOUR year old who regularly calls the staff and other children cunts, fucking bitches and sluts! Mum's response was " Well, he likes watching YouTube so he must have got it from there" But she won't block it as that would " upset him!"
I now have to explain to other parents why their lovely little child is coming home repeating such language!

You are punched and spat at, told to fuck off on a regular basis by 6 year olds???

Do you ever listen to the news? Lots of teachers have done this, that's why there's a recruitment and retention crisis. I'm very relieved that my DD only has two more years in school. Do you have young children? If so you might want to ask who is going to teach them.

Gosh! This is awful and had no idea this happens (doesn't at my son's school)
Perhaps it doesn't but you wouldn't know if it did. The staff aren't going to tell other parents. You are only told things that concern your own child And your child isn't across every class every day.

Gosh! This is awful and had no idea this happens (doesn't at my son's school).
What is the consequence for this behavior? Do they not get expelled?

I've got quite a few friends that are teachers. 4 of them have moved to teach abroad (Dubai and Thailand) and 1 of the others is retraining to be a nurse. The way they are treated by the children has changed so much. Not to mention the parents seem to do very little to prevent/change this behaviour.

I remember going to school where in every class there was probably one or two kids that would answer back or be disruptive but now it's close to half the class. If teachers tell them off, then their parents complain.

OP is a TA on minimum wage. I imagine it’s a job to work around her children and therefore being taken advantage of because shes stuck in that position.

It is because of the entitled public, who can be really quite vile. I’m in the NHS and the change in how people treat our staff in the last 30 years is abysmal.

You would always get the odd person who would swear at Reception but now it is multiple times a day. Every member of our team has cried at some point in their career because of how the public treat them.

There should be greater sanctions against parents of anti social kids. Of kids aren’t behaving in school parents should have to home school. It’s not fair on the well behaved kids. It should be a lot easier to remove the disruptive one

But where do they go? We have teachers who say "well we should just exclude them" but then what? There is minimal specialist provision. They just get passed around schools as each school in the local area has to take their fair share of kids who have been excluded.

I work in pastoral in a large secondary school. Behaviour is massively problematic. We have a real shortage of (good) teachers and a lot of cover which makes things so much harder.

The need from students is so high. I have a huge group of disillusioned kids who have zero purpose in life (phones and social media have robbed them of hobbies and interests) and who don't have the emotional maturity to navigate their exposure to the crap they see on a daily basis. Their language is horrendous, they have little capacity to reflect on their behaviour and their parents want to exonerate themselves from their shit parenting so blame everything on the school:

"so and so can't come to school and can't be expected to behave when they do because they're being bullied and the school are doing nothing to sort it out".

Except that their child physically assaulted 2 other students, sends abusive messages over social media and has never once mentioned that they're being bullied or presented as such.

On a daily basis I deal with physical fights, inappropriate behaviour, self-harm etc etc. The need is so great that we simply don't have the resource to deal with it effectively.

As a mother who is already concerned about their child reaching school age because of all the issues dicussed in this thread, and as someone who has zero experience or knowledge of the realities working in schools, my first thought is that there surely needs to be a changing of rules that correlate with the overall changes in society that are leading to these consistent issues? For example, the increasing amount of parents that seem to either not care about parenting properly or seem to think their angels arent capable of doing any wrong, should be made to understand that schools simply will not tolerate abuse in such that if their children act abusively then teachers have the right to refuse to be put through the abuse by not teaching these children until the matter is dealt with on a deeper level. The trick is knowing how to go about the changes so that it is not necesarily the children who are being punished but the parents. Although I think that maybe we need to accept that children need to understand boundaries in school if its not happening in their own homes while they are still young enough for it to really stick! I appreciate its a very complicated situation and not an easy fix but things need to get tougher in order for them to ger better.

I think the swearing thing is tolerated at home much more than it ever used to be. I still daren’t curse in front of my mother and I’m the wrong side of 40! I never tolerated my kids swearing in front of anyone when they were growing up, and neither of them swear in front of me now as young adults. But I remember when mine were in secondary school, and I became friends with a parent of someone my child hung around with. When I visited, her teen would swear in just normal conversation and when I asked why she let them, she said she didn’t see it as a big deal, and there were worse things they could do, and that she picked her battles. I just see it as a huge mark of a lack of respect. It must be an absolute nightmare to teach at a secondary school. At least at primary you still have some chance of guiding their behaviour. Secondary school you've no chance.