To ask teachers about disruptive behaviour in secondary schools?

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I haven't RTFT because people made so many valid points on the first page alone.

However, I'll add my twopennorth as a secondary teacher of 14 years who left the profession around 18 months ago. One of the drivers in my decision to leave was behaviour in the classroom (although certainly not the only driver) and one thing I will say, after a long period of reflection, is that the school system itself isn't fit for purpose. We expect young people to understand and accept that they must sit still and listen for long periods each day, whenever we tell them to, despite the fact that this is developmentally inappropriate. We sanction them for questioning authority - even if they do so politely. As a society, we have accepted unquestioningly that keeping children and young people indoors for many hours a day, forcing them to learn what we tell them they must learn, regardless of their interests, aptitudes and ambitions, telling them they must all conform to the same rules and regulations regardless of their personality types etc etc, is an ok thing to do. Their individuality, their right to an input in their education, to choice about what they learn, is suppressed. We do this because, in order for society to function, parents must work and so children must be occupied elsewhere in large groups. As a result, conformity and uniformity is the only viable approach. Schools as we know them now would struggle to contain children without these things. That doesn't make them ok.

Before I get jumped on, I completely agree that respect has been eroded, gentle parenting carried out ineffectually and the institutionalisation of children from being babies in nurseries have caused problems. Socially, there has been a perfect storm of conditions which have led to the behaviour we currently see in schools.

But some of it is also young people rebelling against a system that isn't fit for purpose, a system that doesn't respect them as individuals, so why should they respect it?

For so many reasons, only some of which I've touched on here (let's not forget the erosion of music, arts and drama, the curtailing of activities other than those related to the curriculum in case grades should fall, the pressure placed on children to meet certain arbitrary standards at certain arbitrary times, overworked, stressed and unappreciated adults doing their best to fill too many roles for too many people and leaving in their droves due to stress, and so much more) schools are broken places full of unhappy children and unhappy adults. I don't doubt that there are exceptions to this - school suits some children and some schools appear to be managing well - but I really don't believe that this accounts for the majority of children and young people. A sad state of affairs. The system itself needs radical overhaul but this would take years to achieve and would need people in high places both to understand exactly what is happening in schools and why and to have the courage to act for change.

If parents valued education more then children would behave better in class. You get people on here saying ‘my child doesn’t do anything bad, just low level stuff’ and that infuriates me because they are the children who actually are the most disruptive. It is actually quite easy to deal with someone who chucks a chair and calls you a cunt. They get taken out of your lesson. It is the constant low level stuff from about 15members of the class that slows down the lessons and reduces the content to the lowest common denominator.

I work in a private school, and behaviour is very good indeed. Not perfect, but the worst I see on a day to day basis is pupils chatting in class when they should be working, or pupils not having their shirts tucked in. On the whole, they're lovely kids. I think it's because they know they will be asked to leave the school if they can't toe the line. Also we have a system where we can send an email if we have an issue and a member of SLT will immediately come and remove the child from our classroom. I've never actually had to use that system but it is reassuring to know that it is there.

I have worked in a city state school and the behaviour there drove me into private. The issue there was that there were no consequences. The parents didn't care, and would refuse to have their kids attend detentions etc. There's very little you can do without parental support if the child is refusing to comply with the rules. I do realise that these two schools are probably fairly extreme examples and that most are somewhere in between (I hope!).

Changes in behaviour since I started teaching in 1993:

1. Mobile phone addiction= shorter attention spans.
2. The idea that teachers have to « earn respect » -often backed up by parents.
3. Parents arguing with sanctions and believing the improbable lies of their offspring.
4. Internal truancy-a huge issue with gangs of kids roaming the corridors refusing to go to lessons and defying senior staff.
5. Lack of resilience -giving up as soon as a task isn’t easily achievable.
6. Pupils believing their wishes and rights trump those of everyone else-princesses and little emperors.
7. Demands for concessions like toilet passes (obviously some are medically necessary), timeout passes, leave lessons early passes.
8. Very sexualised uniform in some schools for girls-including visible thong underwear, visible sanitary protection, Nike pro shorts in summer, bright coloured bras under white shirts, false nails so long they can’t write, false eyelashes and fake tan all year round. This includes the youngest girls who are 11 and 12. Any criticism will beget the response « you shouldn’t be looking. »
9. Casual vandalism-destruction of school equipment.
10. Refusal to do PE.
11. Sense of entitlement.

Killertomato7
You often post on these threads complaining about schools and teachers being petty. Teachers want kids to learn. They want to move them on. They want them to be kind and considerate. They want them to look after the schools resources and to value being equipped for the lesson. They want them to be polite to others and to be on time for class. It isn't about being petty. But you are clearly the type to complain that it is petty to be sanctioned for turning up to class empty handed or petty to give a sanction for talking over the teacher or throwing stuff across the room. In fact you are part of the problem.

I could write all day, but for me, one of the main difference is the negotiation that constantly occurs. If a child misbehaves enough to stop 31 others from learning, I should be able to use the behaviour policy to sanction them. But if I do that too often with students, it will be deemed that I need 'support' because I'm not managing behaviour adequately in my classroom. Behaviour data is monitored, and staff who use the behaviour system too much are considered a problem. And so staff use it less, by lowering their expectations and tolerating more and more and trying so hard to build relationships, no matter if you're being told to fuck off or not to touch their exercise book or that you're weird etc etc etc. It's a cycle that makes education less effective for everyone else in the room.

Similarly, every single day I see students telling senior leaders to fuck off in the corridor, refusing to go to lessons and just wandering around all day. No consequence works for them, so SLT constantly negotiate and pander. Other kids see this and think, well, if they can do that and nothing happens, my low level disruption is nothing at all! Poor behaviour which goes largely unchallenged is pervasive, and the behaviour of the vast majority is pulled down by witnessing it.

My thoughts are:

• Mobile phones - low attention span, inappropriate content, less time outdoors, in nature/communicating with others
• Human rights - teachers aren't allowed to discipline like they did when I was at school 70s/80s) - one teacher used to throw a board rubber at you if you talked so we were scared of her
• Sense of entitlement - children made to feel special
• Manners not valued or taught, thinking of others, treating others as you want to be treated (previously this naturally arise from Xhristian teaching)
• No consequences in adult world of not working at school - in countries without benefits systems like China or more limited ones (most of the world) if you don't work at school and get a job you starve. Here you can get a reasonable amount for whole life without ever putting anything in.

Do you understand that schools have rules in order to safely organise over a thousand pupils through the course of a day? We can't get on with our 'educational mission' if we can't arrange for kids to get to their lessons, move safely between lessons, and expect to do as they are told.

You might wonder where uniform comes into this but a majority of parents in the UK support schools having uniforms. And if a school has a uniform, then of course it should be enforced, otherwise it ends up not having a uniform at all.

A huge amount of energy in schools is spent getting kids to do the work. We need to create a culture in which this happens. If a parent wades into this and complains about things that they think are pointless, then perhaps they should instead take a step back, think about the bigger picture, and let the school get on with it instead.

Please can you describe how behaviour differs now. It's important people actually talk about it.

I have good behaviour in the majority of classes as I can enforce it in most, but there are some students who really are uncontrollable. I can follow the behaviour policies, but some of them seem to be “protected” by senior team and this is usually because slt either like them because they’re not trying to get a gcse out of them, or because the parents will kick off that much that staff aren’t willing to fight. It can take a couple of students - sometimes only one - to derail a lesson for 30 other students,

My DD goes to quite a strict state school. She has to get buses to get there because there's no way we would send her to the local school which is often in lockdown for weapon carrying etc. The school my DD attends has become quite self-selecting, because the parents who think their child can do no wrong and don't support sanctions now go elsewhere. Long may it last.

I've also been a secondary school teacher for 20 years this year. Behaviour is like nothing I've even seen before.

"petty meaness" is a ridiculous way of describing school rules.
If basic standards of behaviour are seen as schools going out of their way to antagonise students and parenst then it goes a long way to explain the discipline issues school has to deal with.
The other issue is that teachers used to just teach, now they have to act as Social Workers and so much more BEFORE they can even consider actually teaching and yet if they don't get the required results then they are blamed.

Therein the problem lies. I do not expect my pupils to « earn » my respect. I give them respect and treat them with kindness as they are children, and human beings. I treat them respectfully from our first meeting. When then should I ,as an adult, have to earn respect ? Why not teach your kids to automatically respect people, whoever they are?

This is such a bug bare of ours at the moment. The children,always the same group in my daughter's year 8 classes are awful. Even worse when it's a supply teacher. And god forbid it's a teacher not from the UK. We don't know how to address it with the school. It's causing major anxiety for her 😔

I also find it bizzare that people talk like this is a new thing I left school years ago, so started secondary school 22 years ago and there was always the group of strudents that really misbehaved. Fights / bullying / smoking/ disrespect/ bad attendance etc and teen pregnancy was at a all time high 🤣
knife crime among teens in London was super bad as well.
we were class of 2007. We also didn’t come from a “ rough “ area of London 🤷

@C4tintherug i completely agree. The internal truancy is a scandal. It's (for the most part) open defiance and not an unmet need. It's a "fuck you" to the adults around them they have no respect for. They've realised school can't put any meaningful consequences in place because of the need to keep exclusions low.

Ditto fidget toys, and the 40% of y7 who now need a doodle book, but couldn't possibly write the date and a title in the first 5 minutes.

There is something seriously wrong with society. So many parents do not have any common sense and everyone is in it for themselves, I blame the internet and our instant gratification at the tap of a finger culture. People do no longer have the patience and skills to actually deal with real life, with real people and real issues. It's all about them, their personal advantage and instant gratification. Look at how people behave out and about, how they drive, how even kids from caring, good aspirational homes go a bit crazy doing pretty outrageous things.
I blame digital technology and living in a consumerist society where what we buy and show off online matters more than community and actual happiness health and wellbeing.

When I first started teaching 15 years ago, I never had a pupil truant a lesson. It just didn’t happen.
Now we have groups of pupils refusing to go to lessons every single lesson. Roaming the corridor, causing disruption, thinking they rule the roost. Some of their parents refuse to answer the phone to the school.
I am also taken aback by how many “fiddle toys” pupils need these days. I taught a yr 7 class on Friday and over 50% were not listening or engaging with a thing but instead playing on their toys. In the end I took them all away, but I await the inevitable complaints that I was disablist.
The minority of pupils that just have no consequences and that the school can’t permanently exclude is so impactful on each class, it makes it impossible.

Most children are lovely but those that are not ruin it for everyone.

This is my daughter - autistic / communication disorder / cerebral palsy, comes from a “ gentle parenting “ single parent family
and she is the least likely child to be any sort of trouble, she is a complete rule follower and she can not handle getting in any sort of trouble - at school. The ones in her class that cause the trouble done come from gentle parents 🤣 they come from parents just as shouty as they are !

Thank you for genuinely wanting to know what should be done 😊. Personally there are numerous factors not all can be tackled as it’s a society thing. Here are my thoughts :

reasons for increasing disruptive behaviour:

parents and children viewing teaching as less of a respectable profession so feel qualified to question teachers actions ( this is a society view) I think in the age of everyone going to uni , teachers are not put on a pedestal anymore. As everyone thinks they know how to teach as they have a degree.

post Covid- a different attitude to education emerged- parents seeing it as not the end of the world if children take time off. Lots of absence means when they are in the classroom they don’t know what’s going on and can be disruptive.

SEND- moving into mainstream school has been a disaster as the promised funding didn’t happen, when your a teacher and have 30 kids you can’t give one to one support and with the best will in the world TA’s are not experts/ trained on all SEND needs.,

lack of punishment- detentions for some children are water off a ducks back- if after school they won’t turn up and then the parent won’t support it and then they just end up going to another school eventually and the cycle repeats itself.

a lot of exam pressure on kids with the over filled exam specifications since 2016, breaks some children or causes them to disengage.

social media- paints the picture you can do whatever you want in the world not necessarily with hard graft attached.,

there’s probably more but I can’t think of them!

DH works in secondary state, and what seems to be apparent is that it’s the lack of consequences and entitled parents that are contributors to the problem of bad behaviour in school.not course this is secondary information he’s give me, not first hand, but with nearly every secondary school age child having a smart phone, they can just text mum or dad that the teacher was mean and then the parents ring the school up and it’s a shit show. When I was at school I’m pretty sure the majority of us just got on with it and took the teachers word as an authoritative final word.

Anyway, I haven’t read the whole thread but I’m sure there’ll be people blaming SEN kids. From what DH tells me, most of what you could call bad behaviour is coming from those without SEN.

Assuming PP confused permissive parenting with gentle parenting … GP has clear expectations of boundaries and respect.

not a criticism of PP because I think it’s easy for parents to unwittingly slip into permissive parenting when trying to GP so they are saying they GP when, in fact, they arent …. And even those with the best intentions who genuinely are doing their best, are human and have their moment (myself includedh

Left primary teaching many years ago, but it seemed even then that parents felt if they failed to accept how their children misbehaved they wouldn’t have to do something about it. Add Teaching staff and SLT feeling powerless to do anything meaningful about anything but absolutely unacceptable behaviour (heaven forfend a child should be nervous of incurring a teacher’s wrath) and you have what we have now, the inmates taking over the asylum. I expect someone will find that old phrase offensive too.

They’re not going to “support the school in the first place” if the first impression the staff gives is that they are petty, vindictive bureaucrats out to punish their child for the slightest misstep.

For people who talk more about respect than almost anyone else, you seem to have very little notion of actually earning that respect. Also, if you want to convince people that schools are starved of staff and resources — which indeed they are — it’s counterproductive to give the impression that you have ample time and energy to haul students up for the wrong color sock.