Do all primary schools have behaviour issues?

This sounds really cynical, but it’s exactly what we are planning to do with DD - we’re planning on leaving a two-form entry primary in outer London (which itself is small by local standards) and moving her to a small village school outside a market town. DD is high achieving, keen to learn and compliant, and being closely involved with her school I am only too aware how much learning time is lost due to behavioural issues in her class and the wider school. We are also planning on sending her to a girls’ school for secondary as it is very clear that most of the disruption is caused by boys (not actually their fault in many cases as it’s often due to inadequately managed SEND needs and inability to cope with a static, academic curriculum).

DD’s current school is historically one of the better ones in our area, but behaviour post-covid has become much more of an issue, and it also has a reputation for being inclusive and nurturing that means it has become a popular choice for families with SEND children. A tipping point has unfortunately now been reached whereby the SEND needs have massively increased in frequency and severity, at the same time as funding and staffing being cut. Most of the class teachers’ and SLT’s bandwidth is now taken up by SEND, with the middle and higher ability children essentially being treated an an amorphous mass whose main role is just to prop the school’s SATs results up for them - there is absolutely no individual input for the majority of children.

Agree with this, my son is autistic and is extremely compliant at school, he loves the structure and routine and finds it stressful when there's lots going on/overly disruptive stuff going on around him.

@Wildflowers99 I agree with others, you need to probably go into a school, have a tour, speak to the teachers and sencos etc, ask on local groups for different experiences, rather than rely on Ofsted reports.

Not everyone has £2k spare a month for one child.

Although I do agree with you, wholeheartedly.

DD is in Y2 and the school catchment is fairly affluent. There’s probably 6/7 children in her class who are disruptive, but I think we’ve been fairly lucky. The most disruptive child left at Christmas.

I mean of course @Wildflowers99 in that ideal world we don’t live in children and parents would have more choice for what’s right for them but v few kids are getting a classroom environment that’s right for them.

My elder dd was like this and we could not find a suitable state environment. Good luck, nothing in labour’s education policy is improving school diversity.

I think you're going to struggle, primaries seem to have got quite a bit worse in the last few years. I have 5 kids ranging from 18 to 4, my eldest three had a great experience and behaviour was a small issue but seemed to be managed well, my 9yo has had an awful time. In her class of 23 kids 4 have been permanently excluded since the start of this academic year so you can probably imagine how bad things have been for that class.

It does seem to be the norm now to have 3 or 4 very violent and disruptive kids in each class rather than maybe 3 or 4 in the whole school a few years ago.

I think culturally poor behaviour is far more accepted than it used to be. When I’m around other people’s children I’m always surpised that there’ll be a few parents who turn a blind eye to the sort of thing I would pick my kids up on. I think it’s very unfair to blame it all on SEN too. I have a SEN child who has never had any behavioural issues but have witnessed plenty of dreadful behaviour from their neurotypical classmates. More relevant is how the parents and school deal with it.

I’ve been teaching for 23 years. Behaviour has taken a nose dive. It’s society and a broken system. Unfortunately, whether SEND is involved or not, other children do suffer due to the poor behaviour of others. It isn’t fair on anyone, not least the children with unmet needs who aren’t behaving in a way that allows others to learn.

@DeepOchreBear All this can be true, and also that the resulting disruptive environment negatively affects the learning of some other children, can also be true.

Everyone in the same environment doesn’t work, IMO. It ends up with no-ones needs being met.

It’s many years since I started teaching, but there were always one or two, in every class, that had behaviour that was challenging. Some of them had some form of SEND and some didn’t.

Over time, the difference is that more conditions are widely recognised, more children are ND to a greater or lesser degree and changes in parenting style have been beneficial for some children, but certainly not for others. It applies to primary and secondary schools too.

The key point is how behaviour is managed in the school and how effective support is, both academic and pastoral.

I think you need to also educate yourself on what behaviour is in young children especially, it’s almost always their way of trying to communicate something they are finding difficult. You can hardly blame a child for behavioural issues in school when it’s about unmet needs at the end of the day. You can hardly blame a child who is coming from a chaotic or abusive home life and unloading that when in school, and by excluding them from education you are almost always doing more damage than good. That’s a child lost and education is there to be a safe space where they be able to be themselves and gain some support system. You just are just lucky really that you have a compliant child, yes some of that is down to parenting, but a lot of it will just be temperament. You just have seen a chance to moan because you’re not experiencing challenges with your child.

I don't think a child leaving followed by a 1:1 is a behaviour issue, and nor is just having SEN. I do think that what you've laid out here isn't really likely for you to find, no - in any classroom your daughter will be one of 30ish other children so expecting no one else to ever do anything she might find distracting isn't reasonable. Whether work is differentiated for students of different ability is a teaching issue.

All children should have access to suitable education; that doesn't mean that any children is going to get an environment that's their own personal ideal. That isn't achievable in a group setting.

This sounds sensible on the surface, but how is knowing the behaviour policy helpful to a parent of a child presumably without behavioural issues?

What she wants to know is how successful the policy is at preventing children's difficult behaviour disrupting the learning of other children. Knowing what the policy is on its own won't tell you anything about how many children there might be or how they might respond or how much time the teacher is spending on dealing with those kids or what the teacher/SLT would do if the behaviour policy isn't working.

(I'm the mum of the kid with behavioural issues, to be upfront about any bias).

Hang on....not all children who struggle with behaviour in school struggle at home or have issues at home!! That is highly unreasonable to suggest it is the parents fault.
You cant expect a parent to manage behaviour that they never see and in some cases the school never tell them about.

You also have absolutely no context of what the Ofsted reports mean by appropriate behaviour. Every single issue is logged at school in my experience .....my DS school put 5 kids in a consequence yesterday because they were 'play fighting' - they were basically bumping into each other and pretending to fall down (confirmed by at least 3 of those involved). Each got a mark for inappropriate behaviour on the report system. No child was hurt, no child made a complaint and of the 3 spoke to they didn't really understand why they had a consequence but understood not to do it again.

Schools are for all children, and it’s down to the school to manage needs / behaviour. Every child has a right to access education.

I think it can be luck of the draw for different year groups even within the same school. I’ve got two children in the same single form school. One child’s class is brilliant- some challenges but it’s managed well, kids keen to learn and the kids are well behaved and happy. Other child’s class is car crash. Behaviour is poor, kids are behind where they should be and the girls seem to all be suffering from a degree of anxiety due to aggressive behaviour of boys from some of the boys.

That’s because it doesn’t in mainstream schooling. You might find private school better fits her needs. Less SEN. Less disruptive children.

The lack of SEN places pushes them in to mainstream schools who then don’t have the provisions to support. Which leads to their behaviour escalating. It’s not just SEN children. Some are just from neglectful parents. But certainly the lack of provision contributes

From talking to friends and relatives, it seems mostly, yes.

DC are in a traditional, strict, catholic independent school, lack of disruption and small, calm, quiet classes are the main reason for this. We are lucky to be able to afford for this to be an option.

Special schools for children with severe behaviour disorder were closed. Now teachers have the unenviable task of trying to help these children in mainstream on very limited budgets. Help for these children is assessed and then not fully funded.

Schools with ‘well-behaved’ pupils do exist but sadly they’re mainly in the private sector where children with SEN are often weeded out. There may be some state schools that have a grip on discipline but chances are they’re in highly militarised style academies that may not suit your DC who just want want what we took for granted in our childhood: normal, decent state schools with some cheeky kids, one or two very high needs DC but a broad mix of abilities that could somehow be catered for.

If you can’t afford a selective private school, all you can try to engineer is to move to a school where they’re happy day to day and top up any missed learning (as teachers are too stretched to cater for the quiet ones) through tutoring or enrichment activities and quality time doing free and cheap things.

I moved my son schools 2 years ago and he now attends a small village school, best thing we did. He says some of the kids are naughty but in the sense of chatting when told not to rather than swearing, fighting etc. Like at his last school.