Do all primary schools have behaviour issues?

Ive been teaching for 23 years. Behaviour issues didn't used to be a problem. There was always 1 or 2 but nothing huge and always easily squashed. Rarely was the issue constant. There were also a good number of classroom assistants and we were able support those struggling.
Year on year the levels of discipline has slipped. More and more pupils becoming increasingly disrespectful, entitled and violent. Towards other pupils and towards adults.
Well behaved kids eager to learn are becoming less and less. The majority are not badly behaved all the time but they see kids being violent and using terrible, abusive language. This stops being shocking and becomes normalised.
The kids who are well behaved often have to be left to just get on with things whilst I'm trying to stop kids physically fighting or being dangerous with equipment.
I worry what the long term effects on society will be with our children seeing so much violence and hearing so much disrespectful language from a young age.
I have 3 with ADHD (with medication) 6 others neurodivergent, 3 others traumatic backgrounds that spill into the classroom, 1 with a serious health condition that I need to keep her phone on me to listen for an alarm and 4 very entitled, disrespectful and
cheeky kids and 12 others mainly trying to do their best. I have no support except 3 20 minute slots a week. Huge variety in ability and some using tech to access the curriculum.
it is virtually impossible to juggle all those balls and keep them all in the air all the time. I try my best but it is hard. I've basically worked myself into the ground but at least I don't work one day a week and can catch up on my day off.

My school got an ‘outstanding’ recent Ofsted report.

Behaviour is a HUGE issue but we have very experienced staff, so although it was acknowledged in the report that we had a lot of challenging behaviour issues, they also praised how well our management of it was.

All that this means is that yes, behaviour is a MASSIVE concern, but how it is dealt with either makes or breaks a school. Choose wisely!

As an aside…and on a personal level…it’s absolutely exhausting dealing with it daily. I’ve taught for 32 years and I’m broken.

My dc over the years have been in two primaries (we moved house to a new county, hence reason for the change) and it certainly hasn’t been my experience in either. I have no idea what the Ofsted reports say. Previous school was requiring improvement and the current one is rated good.

The one thing I would say is that both are small village schools (less than 100 students) with strong communities. The larger Ofsted outstanding school near our old village apparently had all sorts of behaviour issues. So I think size does matter as well as the sort of community (I don’t mean deprived or not, I mean cohesive vs fractured). Leadership is also important. Both of ours have had really lovely headteachers who cared a lot about the school.

No, what is appalling is that my lovely and well behaved DD has had a chair thrown at her.

We wouldn't accept this level of violence in the work place, so why is it allowed in schools.

Kids today are a different entity to those from say 20 or 30 years ago. Various parenting philosophies, chaotic home lives, lack of boundaries, screen addiction, UPFs and poor food choices plus an archaic education system not adequately equipped to deal with this societal shift means behaviour is impossible to manage in many classrooms.

What is alarming is how poorly educated those capable well behaved students will be due to this decay in classroom standards. Education needs a radical overhaul but with funding only ever being cut and not increased that’s not happening any time soon.

DD goes to a really small village school which is sort in the middle of nowhere. Nearly everyone- with the exception of a handful of children who live in the village, which is tiny- has to drive to get to it. It sounds a bit horrible to say but that filters out a lot of social problems because only parents that are quite invested in their children's education bother. Because it's rural as well, the kids get loads of outdoor time which helps behaviour. I recommend having a look in your area for tiny schools that no-one has heard of.

The parents would know for the disruption and about him being a danger based on what their own child tells them. I wouldn’t assume there’s been a breach of confidence from staff.

I actually hope more parents emailed in general whenever they had an issue directly impacting their child because the more reports the school gets the clearer it is for them what they are dealing with. Most of us just speak to a class teacher instead and that just leads to nowhere.

I teach small groups at dd's school (e
G. I am an artist and teach sketching), ive had her whole class at some point and from what ive seen they are fine, sometimes i have to tell them to not mess and stop chatting around but for 5/6 yos they are fine.

There is the odd good one but pretty hard to tell unless you spend time there or have recommendations that you would trust. I would say that 80% have wild behaviour and minimal sanctions. Think kids telling teachers to fuck off, being violent, smashing stuff up, running around the building during lessons followed by some wet member of SLT saying "that's not ok" on repeat and then giving them a treat. Total 2 tier behaviour policies and totally unfair on the good kids.

That’s appalling that other parents have gotten involved. Children are entitled to their privacy when they go to school, no matter the level of SEN, or SEMH or home life issues. That’s actually disgusting you should all be ashamed. It’s the schools fault too as they have breached privacy for that child and not made reasonable adjustments for the child.

My DD is at a smaller school and there is one boy who is very disruptive and at times, dangerous. There may be an element of SEN but ultimately his parents are crap at parenting and have no boundaries and absolutely spoil him. They have been asked to leave at the end of the year as so many parents emailed in saying they were not to be put in the same class as him.

This will turn into another SEN bashing thread, so I will put in my two cents right away. My DC is at a pre-school attached to a private school, and I know that there a lot a of behavioural issues coming from the children without any (obvious) additional needs, by all accounts neurotypical and fully verbal etc. on the other hand my own DC has very clear SEN but is well supported. In other words, you are going to suck it up that in every school there are issues with behaviour across every different type of child whether SEN or not.

I think it depends what your yardstick for 'behaviour issues' is. I think all schools will have some students who struggle with behaviour, and they always have. My sleepy little village primary in the 90s did (though then they were just called naughty kids, rather than kids with behavioural issues). That isn't the same thing as having widespread behavioural issues that really make it hard for other students to learn. My children's primary school definitely has kids that struggle with behaviour; it doesn't have a widespread problem with behaviour.

The only reason a primary school would have no children who find behaviour expectations difficult is if they were so un-inclusive that they were "suggesting" families move onto other schools etc.

What differs vastly, of course, is how schools manage and support those behaviours, in a way that offers the best environment for all children.

I think it depends on what the reports mean by ‘a significant number of children who struggle with appropriate behaviour’. What do they look at to define that? Do they take into account SEN if looking at behaviour reports? Do they just look at a figure on a spreadsheet and say the comment.

All schools I am aware of either with my DC, our friends DC or our friends who are teachers have issues with behaviour at some level. Low level disruption to higher level issues. My DS class alone has about 7 children currently on behaviour plans (My DS is one of them). BUT the school is addressing it, working with parents and plans are in place. Speaking to DS teacher, it isn't a school issue and that the previous school she worked at had the same issues. If anything it is an age development issue (basically expected of his age to push and test boundaries, some just take longer to get with the programme than others)
A whole host of things can kick off a who host off behaviour issues - change in teacher half way through a year, a unsuitable teacher, change in headteacher or SLT team, number of SEN children, children with behaviour issues outside of school, children with difficult home lives etc.

If this year has taught me anything, its not about the amount of children who struggle with behaviour, its about how the school address it and support those children struggling.

Yes i now assume all schools have gone a bit crazy and homeschool. I moved my kid from one primary school to another and then to a highschool and watched each time as a new headmaster turned up and the schools gradually descended into chaos. These were lovely sleepy schools turned into jungles by the arrival of new head and deputy head.

Not all behaviour issues come from SEN children though. Some of them are very capable of behaving but choose not to because of the way they are brought up outside the school.

I have worked in Infant and Junior school for 13 years and can tell you that you will always get a minority of children who struggle to behave. My current school is in a fairly affluent area, and we still have children (abit a few) who struggle to behave. People think behaviour issues are limited to deprived areas, and yes there may be a higher level, but in all honesty behaviour issues exist in all schools (on a varying degree) in all areas, regardless if deprived or not. It's how the school deals with such issues, that you need to be more aware about. What are their expectations of behaviour in students? What happens if a child doesn't meet those expectations? What are their behaviour policies? Equally how are children rewarded for good behaviour.

Our school has a lot of children with SEN but they are well-supported.

I don’t think all schools have problems with behaviour by any means. Certainly most schools might go through a period where they struggle with a particular child or class, but if behaviour is persistently and pervasively bad then you need to move. My kids’ school has few problems with behaviour and when problems arise they tend to get on top of it fairly quickly.

Ours does not have a recent Ofsted but behaviour doesn’t stand out as an issue. Our DD sounds similar to yours and is happy at school. There are some students with various behavioural issues but they all seem to get along in general and we are happy with her progress.

And the most popular primary now is the one which gets slated for their SEN provision.

There was a school in our area that a few years ago was continuously praised and by recommendations of parents anyone with SEN was advised to go there. It was so good at dealing with SEN that any parent with a child with SEN would try to get in. A few years down the line, it is avoided by anyone without SEN and they are massively struggling with numbers when every other school is rammed.

Some have more than others.

some are good at either managing out or discouraging parents from applying.