To think droves of teachers will make the decision by husband made today- to leave

Unless there is proper parental engagement the battle is lost. Pupils who assault teachers should be taken away in handcuffs and put in front of the courts. Along with the parents. The parents should be heavily fined and if they are on benefits a sum should be taken weekly. No smartphones allowed in schools. Anyone found in possession of a smartphone will be permanently excluded from school.
Anyone who thinks this is too harsh is welcome to spend a couple of weeks in a classroom trying to control a class of feral little shits

Why do these people even have children if they aren't interested in being parents?

And then we have posters on the Private School threads shouting from the roof tops how great state schools are, so in their eyes there really shouldn’t be any need to turn to private schooling. I think your post OP shows the reality of what many of today’s kids are like. I’d rather chew off my arm than teach children who clearly haven’t been shown any morals due to lazy parenting. It really is unacceptable.

Yup.

I called the police after a 14 yr old boy prevented me from leaving the car park one winter's evening by standing in front of my car and pretending to copulate with it. (He hadn't actually attended school that day.)

I was fortunate in that two women officers attended and took it seriously, though the agreed action was that they'd have a word to impress upon him that he was heading for a world of trouble. (Scotland's legal system generally won't touch anyone under 16 and he'd not actually hurt anyone.)

Thanks to the mother - who made a point of telling people all about it - I found out that the boy had started swearing at the officers when they spoke to him. They left, but not before reminding him that they'd probably see him again once he turned 16.

A colleague later saw the boy in a local take-away. He was accompanied by a father who left much to be desired.

My cousin is a deputy head and on the first day of term last year she was spat at, slapped in the face and punched in the stomach. Parents don’t appear to care anymore as long as their children are out from under their feet for a few hours.

I mean you can get them done in around that time or less if you use AI, which I know more and more teachers are doing… so if you don’t, as I don’t, it’s much longer 😞 SLT have made changes this year to make them easier though!

One of my friends is a teacher, and a 15 year old threatened to kill them.

Rather than exclude the pupil, my friend had to be accompanied by another male teacher at all times when in site - and even had to teach the pupil who threatened him.

When he rings up parents to ask why students are absent, he estimates about 50% don’t care and say it’s the schools problem. He says he has parents swear at him regularly when making these calls…

I have worked in primary and secondary. I saw far more extreme behaviour in primary than I do in secondary. Those children tended to be permanently excluded before they made it to secondary. In secondary it is more rudeness, disruptive behaviour, truancy within school and bad attitudes (with bonus swearing) rather than chairs being chucked around the classroom and physical violence.

Primary kids now in general have parents in their 30's. First generation I've taught where there's a serious lack of discipline and control instilled by the parents. They're also the first generation en masse to believe that their child is not to blame and it's obviously the teacher's fault.

So maybe actually we need to blam my generation (1970's born) for raising enttiled kids who have turned into entitled parents and sent these little sods into primary schools in the first place!

At least the police force have sanctions that they are allowed to use. If the SLT is weak and the local authority will not allow sanctions to be used then teachers are powerless against abuse.

Completely different job tbh. I currently work in a lovely girls' grammar school too. I have experienced the other end of the scale too though, and I will never do it again.

It’s awful at the moment, for all the reasons in this thread. Flaming pitchforks on Facebook naming staff, TikTok ‘hate’ accounts set up by kids featuring staff… I could go on.
The distress and embarrassment enters your home and can poison your life from the inside.
Hideous parenting is at fault too, the mentality that rules don’t apply to their child.
I feel too old to change professions now but I still have maybe another 15 years til retirement. 24 years in the classroom already.
We haemorrhaged staff this year. Awful.

I've shared this already on Mumsnet.

20 years ago, I miscarried (very early on) the day after being punched in the stomach by a 15 yr old I didn't even teach. Two male teachers who came to my assistance were also punched.

We made statements to the police on the day of the assaults. I was in my 40s and didn't know for certain that I was pregnant - was waiting to re-test. Miscarried in the staff toilets the next day.

The local police "lost" our statements. I got a phone call from SACRO wanting me to hold a "restorative conversation" with the boy. I refused.

I was a HoD at the time. I made a point of phoning police any time there was a violent incident towards one of my teachers. Typically, the police said they'd "leave it in the hands of the school". (Scotland - the Children's Panel/Reporter deals with criminal matters when perpetrators are not yet 16.)

Later, a colleague in another dept was punched by another 15 yr old. He was shorter than the kid who attacked him. Stretched out a hand to block the second punch.

The perpetrator's parents reported my colleague to the police. The police said that there was no case to answer, so they called a tabloid and complained to the Director of Education for our LA. My colleague was suspended for several months. He was cleared, but was told that he shouldn't have stretched out his hand: he "should have run away".

I now only do occasional supply. Violent incidents are becoming much more common.

At one school, I stopped an assault my first day. The next day, I stopped a fight.

The following week a young teacher in my department was punched when she told two pupils to stop fighting. The same day, a pregnant TA in another department was hit.

Our LA does not allow permanent exclusions, though pupils can be given a whole-school transfer if the parent agrees. Pupils know that very little will happen if they get into trouble.

Typically (but not always) pupils and parents put the blame on teachers.

Verbal abuse towards teachers is more prevalent than physical abuse. We're also seeing the same scenario played out in universities, where complaints are made about the grading of internal assessments and cheating on coursework has become an increasing problem.

Former colleagues who have moved from the central belt to teach in the Highlands or Islands have told me that their life has become so much easier.

Horrifying thread. Are any of these teachers experiences in private schools?

Feral parenting

Very unlikely, most teachers enjoy the holidays too much.

Yeah that's why 40,000 of them quit teaching last year alone.

an adult who’s fingers were posted to her in a box

Wait … what? Where was this school?

Definitely need more of this. Far too much pandering to difficult parents who challenge every decision and policy.

DD attended a sought after cofe girls school with a fab reputation.

The 'new" head assured every parent at open day that the school was 110% committed to excellent standards of behaviour.

It quickly became apparent that there was a significant minority who disrupted, were rude, bullied, etc. They did not have church places.

The head not only made excuses but introduced two behaviour codes. The main one punished hard for minor infringements like a rolled over waistband or forgotten clarinet. This was for the well behaved, well parented girls. The other girls had far more licence because they were less privileged. Even when five of them beat up a girl and banged her head on a pavement the maximum sanction was a three day exclusion. There were more excuses.

Fortunately, we had the means to switch our dd to the independent sector at the end of year 8. The miscreants were allowed to miscreant until two weeks before GCSEs when they were removed.

If parents raised behaviour issues the head shut them down. PTA meetings were an inappropriate forum.

The head was replaced with a better head. The school was turned around and regained it's former reputation within a couple of years.

It isn't all down to parents, weak leadership is also a significant issue and it takes far too long to exit a poor head and meanwhile toxic cultures develop.

We need more pupil referral units and there have to be consequences including expulsion. The poor behaviour of the minority has a reprehensible impact on the performance of the majority.

Ridiculous comment from someone who has never been a teacher.

My year 9 goes to school in a wealthy, rural village.

School had Ofsted in earlier this academic year and some kid 'whose Dad is really rich and who knows he doesn't need an education because he'll just inherit all the wealth' ran out of her maths classroom to 'have a word with the Ofsted inspectors and told them how shit the school is'.

It's shocking what's going on in schools. My daughters friend was kicked in the stomach at a secondary school. This is a girl who ran one of the roughest pubs in the area and nothing happened to her. My partners niece left a rural primary school after her life was made a misery by a 6 year old. I'd rather sign on than do their job.

Schools in my LA are oversubscribed - and lots of independent schools too so if any of those close there will be chaos. For context, our local junior school was 2nd on the times league tables 12 years ago; we live 486m from it and still did not get in - had to appeal on special circumstances for one child in the infants, and then the sibling rule kicked in. And only then because, as a bulge year, they created an extra/5th class and took 35 more children in that year group.

The elder one had also had to go to an infants in an outlying village that was 25mins drive for 3 years at that point. The situation has not improved since. If any of the local schools close down, I am not sure where any of those children will go to.

As far as I can see, the oversubscribed schools are often in the same areas as many of the private schools. Kids from leafy middle class private school catchment areas are not going to be bused to the nearest underperforming school in neighbouring counties.

None of us want our children in underperforming schools, some of us don't get a choice.

Underperforming or not, there are plenty of places. That isn't the point of this thread.

I do think the rise of smart phones has caused the change as without realising it, parents spend time looking their phone instead of their baby and it creates an attention need in the child. They are competing with a smart phone and behaving badly gets parents off the phone to deal with the fact their kid is writing on the wall. So kids learn that bad behaviour gets attention so they do it more.

I se kids t tablets in trolleys at shops instead of being talked to.

the nursery at my old school is basically feral. Kids crying because other kids trash the place. The teacher is leaving as they have broken her and all the lovely resources she set out. Not one complete jigsaw left that have been complete for many years.