To ask teachers about disruptive behaviour in secondary schools?

This.

I don't agree.

I remember back to my own school days and there were definitely good teachers and less good.

I was generally v well behaved in school and loved most subjects. My physics teacher did genuinely dislike me.and she did treat me differently. It happens.

I remember at parents evening all the teachers gave glowing reports about me except this teacher who was unpleasant about me, said things which were not true. My mum stuck up for me and I remember feeling so believed, loved and supported at that time. She wasn't a great mum, but she did the right thing then and I've never forgotten it.

Children are not always wrong or liers. Not all teachers are perfect and right all the time.

I would like to see strict boundaries set in place, and robust support from managers and parents. There is no respect now. Pupils used to hold doors open and say please and thank you. This doesn't happen these days - doors get slammed in your face. No manners. If you challenge pupils in corridors or in class you get told to fuck off or called a fat cunt. Some parents tell school they don't want to be informed of their child's behaviour. There's a lot of misogyny too. Maybe blame Andrew Tate or misogynistic things they are watching on the Internet. Staff are often told it's their fault behaviour is poor. The horse has well and truly bolted. I'd be interested to know what behaviour and respect is like in other countries.

Sorry, I am on a roll (today, I am frustrated, and not looking forward to going back in tomorrow): Most of my arguments with children and parents at the moment is about drinking in a laboratory.

I started teaching over 20 years ago. Every child knew that it was forbidden to eat or drink in a lab due to health and safety. Since Covid, I have noticed a huge shift in teenagers expecting to be able to drink water throughout lessons, but in Science it is especially an issue as students can get ill from this. The number of students arguing the toss about this is ridiculous; I have had numerous instances of children defiantly raising their bottle to their mouths, drinking and/ or eating while looking me dead in the eyes, and their parents insisting this is minor and they shouldn't be sanctioned, when, the lesson before, I was working with E.coli, toxic halogens or harmful solutions, which would make them ill.

There is a basic assumption that rules are there to punish children, when almost every school rule I've ever come across is for the safety and general good of all students.

It is also fundamentally about respect for adults and respect for education.
Many teens do not respect either. I am always struck by the amount if grafitti on desks and school equipment, litter discarded in the canteen etc. We are struct. We sanction if we catch the vandalism but it us constant. I recently saw something about school in another country where part of the school day was cleaning the classrooms. It was done by students. What a brilliant way to teach them to respect the environment. You can bet that the casual vandalism would soon stop if they were responsible for dealing with it.

Agree

100% this. Sometimes kids behave badly because they want to, it’s not communicating an unmet need.

It’s absolutely is parenting for most low-level behaviours. My DC’s teachers are shocked when we are supportive of them, which is incredibly sad. My DC was, of course, being ‘picked on’ by the teacher and who ‘hated them’. Funnily enough, every single year nine child is being picked on by teachers who hate them. The difference is the parents who believe what their child is saying. They can’t see that the same child who is sometimes a normal obnoxious teen at home is the same at school.

I've worked in primary and agree it's just as bad. I've seen 5 year olds disrupt the class on purpose and make it impossible for the teacher to communicate with the rest of the class. I've seen them swear, throw things, break things and refuse to follow any instruction, then try to get other children to join in with them. In some cases the parents are completely on board, but the consequence for this behaviour is to miss a small part of their break and they don't really seem to care.

I’ve never heard a parent say this. I have heard parents who are struggling massively themselves for a plethora of reasons.

So many people like to say parents don’t give a shit and I’m sure there are some but not most. Ask 99% of parents what they want for their children and ‘be a pain in the arse at school and achieve nothing’ doesn’t tend to be the answer.

there are societal factors and I’m not expecting individuals to provide the answers but I do think we need to stop the blame game.

Parent addictions which sadly comes with the rising poverty. It's not gentle parenting to blame it's that people who can't access Mental Health care have given up and the kids have taken over and often had to be the parent at home, so to comply with rules all day seems pointless.

Quite prejudice there!

I'm white English and my children are very well behaved and do very well academically, as do many of their peers.

Not all white English people are rude, act out in school and misbehave!

However, we do know academic outcomes for white working class boys in England are worse than for any other group, and there does need to be more focus from the government on supporting this group.

Fundamentally disagree. It’s almost always, (lack of) parenting.

‘What can I do? He just does what he wants, lol’ etc.

Have you read the examples?
It is parenting when you phone home and the parents don't believe a word and argue against any consequences.

I don’t think it’s parenting. I think that’s a bit unfair.

I cannot comment on secondary but currently year 6 and I can categorically say the main part of my job is the behaviour management of about 4 kids. It literally consumes my day to the detriment of the 24 other kids in the class who I constantly feel like I am failing. My classroom is nowhere near as fun as it usually is as at least one of these 4 kids will ruin it.

The main problem is lack of any meaningful consequences for their awful behavior. The priority is to keep them included and part of class. Which means they never lose out, the only consequence is a reflection on their behavior they then see a token sorry and life goes on to the next big thing they do and it repeats.

Parents don't discipline them, I fact they are the most argumentative parents who blame every aspect of their kids behavior on someone else. Every thing is done with consideration for these children without much regard for the needs of the majority of the class who are losing out.

I am leaving later this academic year but it's to tie in with us relocating. A decision we made largely as I refuse to teach in an inner city school any longer. Don't know if I will teach again as I have been so deeply unhappy the last few years.

I agree. I've never really met anyone that does gentle parenting.

I work a lot with families where children are at risk of going in to care. Many of the children in these families have very very poor behaviour in school, low attendance and are generally disruptive and hard to manage. The parenting in these families is generally the opposite of gentle. And it has very detrimental effects on the children's wellbeing and behaviour in the classroom (if they even turn up).

If a teacher says to a parent 'x has been disruptive in my lesson' and the parent doesn't care or disagrees, it doesn't mean it's gentle parenting. It might mean a whole host of other things and it may even be the case that the child is receiving quite the opposite of gentle parenting at home, and perhaps even neglect or abuse.

Agree so much with other comments.
One thing I would love is children being able to understand that it's not just my responsibility to manage their behaviour. They have to take responsibility too. I simply cannot teach and manage every aspect of every child's behaviour for them, because that would entail saying to 30 children, individually:
Sit down on your chair
Listen to me and others
Write the task in your book
Try your hardest to understand before asking for help
Don't say unkind things to others
Don't swear
Don't leave the classroom
Go to the toilet at break and don't drink 3 litres of water per lesson
Do your homework
Write your name on your homework
Use please and thank you to others
Share the glue sticks

I can't do that every lesson, and teach.

Parenting is the reason. Until that changes, there’s no hope for some children.

We have 46% FSM and the kids are generally good but there is a small core who are destined for a hard life as a result of poor parenting. This small % of children occupy a disproportionate amount of staff time and energy. We are a very inclusive and supportive school but some parents just don’t, or can’t, step up to do their bit. By the time the kids get to us they’re in a downward spiral.
Our local primary heads say they are seeing the worst behaviour ever - from infants and parents. That’s despite the most effective support in terms of mental health and practical support that is available in schools in this area now. They expect schools to do EVERYTHING related to their lives, including the parenting.

@Ridiculousradish Lack of equipment is not a minor issue anymore. I have classes where 15 students at the same time didn't bring a pen, expected me to provide one and half of them had taken the pens apart/ stomped on them by the end of the lesson, so they were no longer usable. When, in a class of 30, 20 don't bring in a calculator for a Maths-based lesson (my subject is primarily Maths-based), but the department only has one tray of calculators to share between 5 members of staff, where, in a graph-drawing lesson, hardly any student has a pencil or ruler, it not only takes time, but also departmental resources - money, which could be spent on better lab equipment or chemicals.

Unfortunately, support staff don't always see the scale of the issue. I provide pens, but have already gone through two boxes of 100 this term - i.e., 200 pens in 3 months, because students don't bring them into school and don't look after them when given one. At least one glue stick a week is wasted because some students would rather smear it all over the table, flick bit of it through the room or cut bits off and stick it into plug sockets or onto gas taps (I kid you not). There are some classes that I now refuse to allow to glue their sheets in by themselves, because of the waste of school equipment, so that then takes up my own time, because the books are still expected to look pristine. If students had to provide their own, they wouldn't be so wasteful.

And weak headteachers who indulge parents whatever their children do and won't support their staff.

Yes, this. Restorative justice can get in the sea.

‘Headteacher, wee Jimmy here (6) has trashed the classroom, called me a twat, told another boy to fuck off and punched a reception girl in the face knocking her to the floor’.

‘Oh dear. Jimmy, that makes me sad, come and sit in my office and have a biscuit. We can play Lego and chat. Then we will draw a picture for the girl in reception’.

What would make a difference:

Allowing vocational qualifications again.
Encourages teens to see the point in what they are doing.

Social services support for families struggling has been cut to the bone. My secondary had a washing machine and a dryer so we could help kids wash uniforms and PE kits if it wasn't possible at home.
So re-instating social services help so the families where poverty or other issues are really impacting the kids can be helped.

Drugs. County lines is impacting so many kids. Again, this is SS and police to support and help with (the teens are often unaware of what they are getting into and won't listen to their parents). Both SS and the police have had massive cuts.

More special schools and a better system for supporting disabilities. These days you get an EHCP if either the healthcare system picks you up before school or your parents fight for it. We had one lad who had been sexually abused as a preschooler and because his dad had learning disabilities and his primary school wasn't on the ball he had no documentation and no support whatever. He'd sort of learnt to read and could add and subtract up to 100. In any sensible system he'd have been in special school age 7.

These aren't the kind of issues that can be fixed in schools and massive massive numbers of kids are affected by them.

Recognising that behaviour is communication doesn’t = not give your DC boundaries and discipline.