To think something has gone wrong in schools? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz0m2x30p4eo

That's a very upsetting story and although I don't work in schools I know a lot of teachers and staff and I find this so hard to believe as it doesn't fit with their ethos and attitude, was there perhaps more to the story? Did the child headbutt a member of staff and use a racial slur and it's being reported as something else entirely?

Absolutely. Thats really my point. If I can't meet the needs of just two children then I have no hope with a class of 30+.

Balancing all the needs of children in the class is a massive challenge for any teacher.

Just one example. I have one children who needs to move around, talk or make noises constantly either with their voice or with objects. Another child is hugely sensitive to noise and can't bear working with lots of noise. If either don't have their needs met they become distressed.

But behaviour doesn’t mean bad or deliberately naughty behaviour. It can be anxious behaviours, tics, stammers, crying when something goes wrong etc. It doesn’t make them poorly behaved but it does mean the teacher needs to make sure their needs are met which can still be disruptive to other children. (Said as a parent of highly anxious child that wants so hard to be good but has issues controlling emotions).

I do think kids, by and large, will respect strong boundaries and discipline when it comes to school (and in general). Kids test boundaries and if they're weak they'll escalate.

I agree. I think this is highly unlikely to be true. It's a sensationalist story designed to make out schools are excluding children for no good reasons and are to blame for all that is wrong with society...!

Nope, and I don't fully buy it either.

Last perm ex we had was over a child bringing a knife to school and threatening a staff member with it, to give you an idea for the kind of thing we do it for.

Kids need to be punished for bad behaviour or it just disrupts the lesson for everyone else. Also for the safety of the other children and staff.

If bad behaviour escalates then that's going to be mean exclusion. It's poor parenting mostly or coming from poor backgrounds, but teachers are hamstrung when it comes to disciplining children. The only avenue the school have is exclusion.

The number excluded in the 1994–95 school year, the first full year after the implementation of the sections of the 1993 Act, stands at over 12000.

In 2003/04, 9,880 children were permanently excluded from schools in England.

In the 2022/2023 academic year, there were 9,376permanent exclusions in England, which was a record high and a 44% increase from the previous year. The rate of permanent exclusions was 0.04, meaning there were 4 permanent exclusions for every 10,000 pupils.

Let's try again.

And of course there is a lot we can do. The vast majority of school staff have been raising awareness and talking about it for years. Actual solutions not just waffle and word soup. No one wants to listen or do anything real about it though. Definitely not past governments.

It was hilarious when Covid hit and hundreds of parents started bleating on about inequality, resources , and what not because it was THEIR kid being on the receiving end if it, and hence schools and students have been struggling for years. They also went quiet when things went back to normal, because THEIR kid was fine again.

You want solutions? More SEN schools, more funding for help and support services , early start, SS, CAMHS (all mental health services really )etc., smaller class sizes and funding for schools, early intervention and support, changes to the curriculum and the way we assess things. I could go on and on and on. No one is listening though.

I am 100% sure that that is not the actual story but schools, due to confidentiality rules, aren't allowed to say what really happened.

The whole thing smacks of a kid claiming that they were sent out of the lesson for asking to borrow a pen when actually they swore at the teacher and called them a cunt when the teacher suggested that they might want to start bringing a pen in.

I watched BBC Breakfast when this came out and they had the CEO from Chance UK saying a 7 year old boy was excluded for two days for stealing an apple from the canteen to give his mum who he was worried about as there's not enough food at home.

I'd just like to say I don't recognise this course of action in the school I work in. We've had similar and that child has been given support as has the family.

Do any other school staff on here feel exclusion would be the action taken in their school?

It's also massively tedious and inaccurate to see the usual conflation of SEN and behavioural issues here.

Many children with SEN don't have behavioural issues and are therefore ignored and failed.

Many behavioural issues have nothing to do with SEN at all. In fact these kids with behavioural issues hugely distress many SEN kids and prevent them from learning even more than they do for other children.

It's utterly lazy and inaccurate to try to blame SEN children for the majority of behaviour problems in classrooms. Some SEN kids may have behaviour issues because they shouldn't be in mainstream or because the school/ LA is refusing the support they need to cope in mainstream (that was promised as part of moving most SEN children to mainstream). But to pretend they are the main cause of classroom behaviour problems is absurd.

The classes are twice the size they should be (and are in countries with decent education systems), the curriculum is ridiculous and school is started much too young before it's developmentally appropriate. And the whole ethos in most schools is horrendous, all about conformity and crushes all love of learning out of most of the keenest children who arrive there at 4 or 5 as sponges for information and wanting to learn. It's abhorrent to try to blame children with disabilities for this state of affairs.

Meh, I'm a maths teacher and the existence of calculators hasn't killed off the need to be numerate quite yet.

The idea that you don't need to know anything because you can google it is an incredibly stupid one. How do you get anything done if you have to google everything? How does your brain make links between various pieces of knowledge if they are all stored on separate Wikipedia pages? How can you be creative if you have no starting point, nothing to draw inspiration from, a brain that is a blank?

If you don't fill your brain with useful information, it will fill itself with shite. How many of us can still remember advertising jingles from when we were kids? Our brains want to learn and store vast amounts of information.

Because now they've got a valid excuse.

My point is not that kids today all have good digital skills, my point is that their motivation to memorise large amounts of information has been compromised by the digital world we now live in.

My point is not that all kids have good digital skills, my point is that their motivation for memorising vast amounts of information for a test has been compromised by the digital world we now live in.

Yes, people are definitely saying that there are things that can be done.

It's just they don't agree with the OP's assertion that what is needed is 'firmer boundaries'.

I don't agree. No one is saying nothing can be done. School staff are trying their hardest to think of creative ways to help all children every day.

There's lots that can be done. Better funding, smaller class sizes, early intervention for children with additional needs.

There are more children living in what is defined as poverty but there is so much more to consume and SM makes it easy to see so many people feel hard done by.

There were always kids dragged up, still are but there is the rise of people wanting their children to like them all the time and be their mate. I grew up-in an abusive situation with beatings with a garden cane. I do not agree with physical punishment at all but I see plenty of people never saying no. Children need boundaries.

DH and I retired recently from higher education so they have all been filtered. Though obviously many are still exceptionally bright they seem more of a homogenous mass, influenced by SM. Critical thinking has been replaced by echo chambers online. It’s dumbing down the entire nation across all social classes. I see it on here with people vilifying the left or right wing press and anyone who reads whatever they disapprove of is to be hated, cancelled or whatever.

I like MN because there are people with views across what appears to be the entire political spectrum. It used to be very left wing, there has been a definite move to the right of late but not as much as people think.