To ask teachers about disruptive behaviour in secondary schools?

I absolutely agree with everything you’ve said. If I could make one quick change, I’d massively cut the GCSE content and if I could make one more complex change I’d bring back a wider range of educational settings (selective/academic tracks, vocational tracks, SEN units, APs) within one school if that’s more palatable for the inclusion advocates. Even in the selective school I work in, where many students do come out with a raft of 8s and 9s, the GCSEs kill much of the joy and love of learning because they’re such a slog.

The increase in the number of parents constantly coming in, making a fuss, complaining, wanting to spend ages talking about how wonderful their child was correlated with the increase in children demonstrating poor behaviour.
Parents need to be told that if they wish to consult with a teacher they should phone in to make an appointment, as they would for other professionals. If it is deemed urgent then the SLT can deal with it.
No parent should be able to trot into school for any reason beyond the Office, it's a matter of security.

On the pen issue, all the pens I had to lend out in my classroom are gone. A girl asked to borrow a pen the other day and I said no, I didn't have any pens but she could have a pencil.

She sneered at the pencil and said that she wasn't going to write in pencil so I suggested that refusing to do the work would result in isolation. She said that if I gave her a pen she would do the work. I suggested that if she were so desperate to write in pen she might consider bringing a pen in.

Endlessly giving out pens out to kids who don't have pens doesn't do anything apart from create kids who don't think they have to take any responsibility for their own education. The good kid who genuinely forgets a pen as a one-off is usually the kind of kid who borrows one from a friend.

During covid, when we were not allowed to lend out pens it was noticeable that more kids actually brought pens to school.

Yes, the stuff I mentioned is definitely down to what parents are allowing at home. It affects the kids and then causes problems at school.

I still personally bought pencils (they are much harder to break than pens although a year 10 boy can destroy most things if he puts his mind to it) and lent them out. I got through a couple of boxes a term.

I worked in a Forces school and there was one belligerent NCO who insisted that the school should provide everything for his son. The Head agreed, the boy was told to stand outside the Head's office before school started and he was issued with a pen etc that he signed for, at break he had to report to the Head's office to return it, both signing, at the end of break he came again to collect and sign for his stuff, etc all through the day. He lost an enormous amount of playtime, the Head sometimes was busy and the boy waited longer. After 2 days he came to school with pens etc!

I don't think that schools encourage Tiktok and other such crap so it's back to the parents' lack of control.

The Head of the Primary at the through school I am involved with says that around 50% of the current R class has SN and a lot of these are "environmental".
A large number of these children will continue to need extra support and resources throughout their whole school lives.
The current Y7 who started school in Covid have a lot of issues too apparently

Re the pens thing:

I personally as a teacher do not give a flying wotsit about uniform. If we had a crack down week (these were usually advertised well in advance so the kids and teacher knew) then I'd enforce the rules. Otherwise I didn't care.

But kids with no pen (and they often had nothing at all with them) was a problem.

My school for a while had a policy of giving out pens as needed. One lad I taught opened his bag and showed me nearly 400 or so -a whole rucksack full. The school used so so many pens.

So they stopped. Kids who were pupil premium would be given a pack at the start of the school year. If they lost if they could go to the PP Manager and she'd put in place e the same as we had for the send students - each teacher was given a clear exam pencil case with the kids name on and gave it out and got it back each lesson.

I still personally bought pencils (they are much harder to break than pens although a year 10 boy can destroy most things if he puts his mind to it) and lent them out. I got through a couple of boxes a term.

I found it easier to be honest because often the kind of kid who doesn't have a pen (or usually anything else) if you don't give them a pen and let them get involved in your lesson they will just be bored and then cause you more problems.

Some teens, not all teens, can and will exploit every hole in every policy.

My DH is a teacher at secondary and like pp's say it's a lack of respect, entitled behaviour and thinking that they shouldn't get consequences.

And all supported by their appalling breeders. Years ago teachers were told that punishments such as doing lines were 'demeaning' and 'pointless', but they were meant to be pointless, an intelligent person would see that the way to avoid lines was to behave. Teachers are meant to stand 'in loco parentis', luckily for many pupils they are actually far better than the parents they stand in place of. Tell the stroppy parents that their opinions on trivia are irrelevant, if you don't like the school then home school as you're such an expert, and let the majority who want to learn get on without you darling's disruptive behaviour.

I agree with what others have said about crap parenting being at the root of it.

However, I also think that the online and tv content kids are exposed to from a young age - and far too much time gormlessly staring at screens - is also partly to blame for a drop in standards of behaviour and a lack of social skills. Where some parents aren't doing their job properly there are kids, some younger and some teens, who are learning their 'social skills' from tiktok, Love Island and Eastenders, and barely looking up from their phones to actually speak to real humans unless they have to. Some of them are accessing porn. Their whole view of the world, the people in it, and the way it works is warped by this shit. And this is what you end up with.

Yeah, right. Don't be daft.

The most worrying thing I think is that the current cohort of teens, with their poor mental health / SEND / poorer behaviour whilst they were born around the time of the 2008 recession had access to SureStart centres. They could have, if their parents accessed it, all the early years intervention they could possibly have wanted, DD and I went to groups everyday until she was three and it was fantastic.

If those children are struggling now then what on earth are the current Primary school children and younger going to be like that didn't have those things and experienced COVID at a very young age and experienced the CoL crisis, many families have been on their knees for a long time.

Part of the reason I left teaching was because I was sick of the parents. They would march into my classroom every morning expecting me to drop everything and listen to them until 9:30. They had no awareness that I had a whole class of children to teach and that their expectations of my time impacted every single child in the class. I was shouted at and threatened by parents because I had the audacity to punish their children for their awful behaviour. I had ill children (who had been throwing up all night) dumped on me the next day and who then proceeded to throw up all over my classroom- this was disruptive and affected the education of every single child in the class, to me and to my poor TA who then had to clean up piles of vomit. The headteacher had an open door policy so the parents could enter the classroom at the start and end of the day so once they were in and in rant mode it was very difficult to get them out again. The headteacher, incidentally, made herself scarce every morning and afternoon so that she didn't have to deal with the open door policy. When I first started teaching I would only have the odd parent on the odd morning who would do this. Ten years later and I would have up to 8 parents each morning wanting to dominate my time and disrupt the calm as the children were coming in. The increase in the number of parents constantly coming in, making a fuss, complaining, wanting to spend ages talking about how wonderful their child was correlated with the increase in children demonstrating poor behaviour. Parents may not be single handedly responsible for behaviour issues in schools but they absolutely are a huge part of it.

The wheels have been coming odd the education bus for many years.

Some years ago, the toilet in my department was set on fire by a Year 7 boy who had brought a lighter into school and lit a duster he found. The smell of smoke alerted us and the fact that the boy attempted to abscond through a window. Prevented from doing that, he tried to strangle me, then ran off, was stopped by the HT, who he peanutted and had to be restrained. The HT excluded him and he was reinstated by the governors.

I know full well that this child had a troubled home life, with a parent who cared not a jot about him. I know that the family were in trouble with their neighbours and I know that the boy was on the streets most of the time he was t in school. Nevertheless, he endangered staff and other students and had no investment in being in school or in learning.

It's very hard to be amenable to someone who has physically harmed you, as well as verbally abusing you at every opportunity.

I’ve taught in inner and outer London secondary schools on and off for over 20 years, interspersed with other jobs in youth work/safeguarding etc. I’ve finally left the profession this year, as poor behaviour is so prevalent.

I spent the last 4 years teaching in a school rated “Good” by OFSTED in a quite affluent middle-class area, but the catchment area also covers some very deprived local areas, so it was a real mix of students. When I phoned parents to report poor behaviour, some were very supportive but others were defensive/dismissive, tried to tell me how to do my job. (Some of the most arrogant, dismissive parents were the middle-class ones.) There was often little support from senior staff either, and consequences for poor behaviour not rigorously, fairly or consistently applied.

Over the years, I’ve been sworn at, called a ‘bitch’, told to “shut up” multiple times, had comments about my appearance/clothes, and had objects thrown at me, including pens, empty bottles, rubbers, sweets. I’ve been blocked from leaving a classroom by a huge 15 year old boy because I had confiscated his phone and refused to return it.

One of the final straws was when I was covering an A level class of students I didn’t know in a different subject. When I challenged constant chatter/messing about, one sixth-form boy called me a “f_ prick”. I called in the HOD who removed the boy but when I asked her later what had been done about it, she told me he had denied it and she found it hard to believe as he was an A* student. So he had no consequences and I was completely undermined.

Whilst all of these experiences were horrible and gradually wore me down to having to leave, the thing that distresses me most is the way that the kids who want to learn and do well get their learning disrupted EVERY DAY, and their enthusiasm knocked out of them through being bullied/ridiculed for being a ‘boffin’ and other insults. It made me so sad to see bright-eyed, keen Year 7s start school every year, only to have to moderate or mask their enthusiasm to avoid getting singled out by others.

Sorry this has all been so negative but that has been my experience over 20 years…

Not to mention the Daily Mail Sad Faces from parents complaining that their child has been sent home due to an inability to follow school dress code.
So many girls in other countries would wear ANYTHING to be able to access a good, free education but Chantal is traumatised by being asked to wear shoe she can actually walk in and pull her bloody skirt out of her arse!

Exactly.

Parenting has gone horribly wrong in this country. You only have to look on this forum to see the amount of parents moaning about school rules and excusing poor behaviour because their child has SEN. If anyone dares to suggest that poor parenting is rife and that not all kids have SEN (and even if they do, they still need to be parented), you are shot down as if you are the most evil person on earth.

I am so glad I left teaching. Nothing in the world would persuade me to go back to that.

You are part of the problem then. You clearly have no idea what it is like managing a class of 30 pupils.

Not a teacher but I sit on an exclusion panel for a local comp and I echo whats been said about parenting, 9 times out of 10 when we are dealing with really really awful behaviour and incidents the parent who attends (if they turn up) bleats on about how it can't possibly be their childs fault.

I couldn't agree more! I get told to fuck off at least once a week and no matter how thick your skin is it does start to grate.

Parents often refuse to hear that their child isn't the Angel they think their child is and more and more are expecting school to teach manners and life skills that are, in fact, their job.

Haven't RTFT but I'd like to add the sheer number of pupils who are unable to enter a classroom because they "feel uncomfortable" or need to sit next their BF because otherwise they aren't able to attend, or the ones who have such poor bladder control that they can't sit through a 60 minute lesson without a toilet break. The complete lack of basic manners and absolutely vile way kids speak to each other and sometimes to me. The idea that all of their problems are mine to solve. The complete absence of a filter, so no awareness that their every thought isn't worth sharing.

I've not been teaching as long as you, Piggy, but long enough to have used quite a few different behaviour systems, and this one has definitely made the most improvement in class behaviour.

I always see the comment 'oh but kids will want their name on the board as a matter of pride' but I have never had an issue with that.

A warning is for low-level disruption. It is perfectly allowed to send the kid straight to isolation for a serious incident, which is logged differently.

I agree that if we write names on the board and don't log them then behaviour staff don't know who is getting loads of warnings but generally if they are getting loads of warnings, they are also being sent out of lessons, because sending a kid out of your lesson is easy. We know who the disruptive kids are.

Oh, and ours are allowed on their phones at lunch! How is that overseen??

So , ours get to lesson 5 having queued for 28 minutes (if they didn't charge down the corridor to be first in the queue) rammed fried food down their gullets in about 30 seconds flat , midway through a game or some online beef on their phones. There is no down time at all for anyone.