To think disruptive behaviour in schools is out of hand?

The trouble is that we are talking about ‘bad’ kids.
Equating having SEN or coming from a deprived background with few boundaries etc to being bad.
I believe that few kids if any are ‘bad’ - it’s usually not their fault if they are.
Just like it’s not the dog, it’s the owner…..
We need parents to take more responsibility and that’s where a lot of this has gone wrong. There is an increasing minority of parents who don’t have the will / capacity to parent their children.

SEN children are not getting their needs met at school - and often not at home either.
A lot of the problems I am having in my classroom currently are SEN children having to follow expectations. Things such as not picking up an iPad all the time,running out of the room or having to do anything that they don’t want to at all.
I spoke to their parents- they said they just let them do what they like - choose what’s for dinner, go to bed when they want etc as they can’t bear the meltdowns.
The only exception is coming into school in the morning- when they arrive late so they can park outside and they carry them into the room and put them down, screaming. It’s not the child’s fault at all - but how am I supposed to teach my class?

I mean personally, yes I think we should criticise them for that. However, my point is, the success of a school is not exactly magic if they just eradicate (by one means or another) children who can't comply or who will skew their results.

It's a bit like everyone shaking their heads at a year 4 teacher and saying, 'why don't your class have GCSEs? The year 11 teacher manages.' The reading age alone of the secondary school kids who get suspended/ excluded is often around 8 years old. Just to access the whole curriculum over 5, 6, 7, 8, whatever subjects requires herculean effort from these children. Another equivalent would be expecting the average Mumsnetter to undertake an advanced mathematics degree, answering questions in front of the maths students, not allowed to go to the toilet, sitting through the whole course in weird little blazers then say 'oh just chuck them out if they're bad'.

What is the measure of a school? Should we criticise them for kicking out bad kids if it drastically improves the education of good kids who actually want to learn and get on in life?

I think we need a lot more data before we can say Michaela "works". For example:

• The % of EHCPs at Michaela vs London average.
• The % on SEN support at Michaela vs London average.
• The number of managed moves per year vs London average.
• Recent number and rate of suspensions and exclusions.
• Number of children removed from roll for various reasons (to electively home educate, change schools, move catchment but stay within London) in last few years.

I'd be really interested in talking to the parents of year 6 feeder schools as well, just to get anecdotal evidence and soft data.

It's not hard to imagine that Michaela has sort of ended up as a self selecting school.

Spot on and that's why Phillipson hates Michaela

I think what Katharine Birbalsingh has doen at Michaela is remarkable. There huge numbers of kids there who are gaining results that would be unheard of elsewhere. The kids seem genuinely happy there too. Kids secretly like discipline. I say all this as someone who taught for 5 years in tough schools in depreived areas. If I had had a headteacher like Katharine I would perhaps have stayed in the profession. As it is I burnt out in 5 years.

The children who would most benefit from her style of school would be those from deprived backgrounds, those who would be in the second sets or lower on other schools and those who have middle class parents who are hands off or overly fussy complaining every time their child is displined however minor (both cause schools problems). These children all really benefit from strict structures.

It might be that children who from an early age understand the point of school, are well behaved and capable of deferment of enjoyment for later gain (ie gaining the grades for university or high quality graduate apprenticeship) can achieve highly in a less strict environment but these children are a tiny minority in most schools.

One answer might be grammar schools for those children that can cope with the freedom and are clearly academic from a young age and Michaela-style for the others who might discover they're academic under the strict regime. The Michaela school might still out-perform the grammar school - which would be interesting. However no government would admit that comprenhensive schools are a failure and those that succeed do so because, and only because, of catchment area.

I honestly don't think these "persistently disruptive" students would be that much of a problem if schools had a more skills led curriculum, with a lot more autonomy and choice.

Imagine if secondary schools didn't have 150 conversations a day about minor uniform issues because everyone just wore basic P.E. kit style uniform, if there were lots more practical subjects on offer, if after 14 pupils could choose to take functional maths and English plus their choice of options (e.g. technical college style courses), if pupils had the autonomy to leave classrooms when they're getting stressed / fidgety to go to pupil lounges or even the toilet if they want to. I'm sure there would still be issues but I honestly think it would be 100 times less of a battle and everyone would be so much happier (in general).

Lesson plans are recorded year on year so there is no need for teachers continually to reinvent the wheel
CA portfolio of common lesson plans based on a parallel set of core materials are produced in school time.
This means that any replacement teacher knows instantly where is a particular class in the curriculum.

Any school can do that, I assume the reason they don't is because the National Curriculum keeps changing so teachers have to keep coming up with new lesson plans. Does Michaela follow the NC?

I moan about some of the ridiculous school rules I hear about (like giving detentions during Tube strikes) but I had a conversation with a teacher friend yesterday which opened my eyes. She teaches in a Catholic primary school. Y3, so 7 year olds.

She said they are rude and disrespectful and if she asks them to be quiet they ignore her and when she asks them if they heard her tell them to be quiet they say "yes but we wanted to keep on talking".

She also said that there's a fear of silence - they are all massively overstimulated from having smartphones from a silly age etc. I can totally see where she's coming from.

But will people reading this keep their kids off consoles and devices? I bet they don't.

People thought TV was the devil when I was a child, but it was nothing to what kids are exposed to now - it doesn't have to be inappropriate content, it's just the volume of it.

You're right, I never thought of that. I hope you're able to find a solution for your son x

Yes my dc too needs order and quiet to achieve anything, setting doesn’t solve the whole thing and it creates other issues of kids getting stuck in those sets.

It doesn’t solve the problem for my son who wants to learn and is capable of doing well but is not in top sets. He has dyslexia and ASD with anxiety, with learning support he will do well but his learning is being made extra difficult by the teachers managing began for half a lesson. Why should those who aren’t as academically bright, be subject to poor behaviour interrupting their learning. Sets should be based on attitude to learning rather than academic results.

I can't afford private school for my 2 girls but the classes are streamed into sets - which usually solves the problem :)

This is a very good point, my daughter's school is quite remote and you can only really get there by driving. It means that everyone who sends their child there is affluent enough to own a car and has actively chosen the school for it's quirky ethos. There are very few issues with behaviour and most of the children are quite advanced for their age- about half the latest Y6 class went on to the super selective independent school nearby which has about 10 applicants per place.

I'm not sure that's so crazy. In normal speech you probably say 3 or 4 words a second I guess, so 10,800 words and hour. It's very possible that an engaged parent who spends a lot of time chatting to their child and narrating the world talks for 2 or more hours more than a disengaged, stressed parent.

30 million words? That's a load of bullshit. Do the math. 30,000,000 ÷ 4 ÷ 365 = 20,500 more words per day. Not a chance.

I think parental buy in is a significant point. My DC went to a great state school where on the whole the behaviour standards are pretty good. It has a fairly traditional ethos, though nothing like as strict as I gather Michaela is. I'm not claiming there are zero incidents of bad behaviour, but my DC's learning was never significantly disrupted and when I did some volunteering there I found the vast majority of the kids I interacted with to be polite and respectful.
Due to the slightly unusual demographics of the area a large number of the pupils are bussed in from outside the catchment area, often passing more than one other school to get there. Not that I am suggesting for one moment that every parent who chooses their local school doesn't care about their child's education, but it does mean that there is a self selecting population of parents at this particular school who are likely to have certain expectations of their children and crucially will be supportive of the staff when it comes to things like discipline, getting homework done etc. I do think the fact that a lot of families are actively choosing the school despite additional inconvenience and travel expenses means that adherence to school policies etc is better than average. It must make the teachers' job easier to know that if they impose sanctions on a pupil it's highly likely that they will be backed up by parents rather than ignored or challenged.
How things can be improved I really don't know, but I think there is a tendency to blame schools for the problems in wider society when really it's wider society which is the cause of problems in schools.

I find it depressing that children are being labelled feral etc. At the end of the day they are children and their behaviour is a response to either what is going on outside of school (family, friends, other issues) or the school environment. Rather than label them feral, I wish we had an education system that stopped and asked why they behave like this and how can we help them. One of the issues is the one size fits all system. Another issue is the private school system. My children go to standard state primary, with above average "disruptive" children as the school has a reputation for supporting them well. The school work hard to support and help those children and their families so children who were once talked of as naughty are now thriving. If all the kids from the primary went to the standard local secondary then all would be somewhat better. But as everyone obviously wants the best for their children then those who can afford go to private for secondary or else move to live near "better" secondary schools and the local secondary school never improves.

Professor Dana Susskind in the US and her 30 Million Words movement has used research to show that middle class kids hear and engage with an average of 30 million MORE words than their deprived peers in the period from birth to fourth birthday.

The research was a huge comparative study using many thousands of families. The study was years-long fly-on-the-wall CCTV recording parent-child interactions over the younger years.

The comparison was between middle class family homes to those of deprived families in ‘the projects’ (aka council estates)

Middle class kids were shown continually and right from birth, to be talked to, regularly to be read to - especially before bed - and are taught signing to communicate before they are even able to talk, are spoken to in complete sentences and their responses always listened to.

Middle class kids are given simple choices on what to eat, what to wear, where to go etc and their efforts are continually praised - not just their successes but their efforts.

And when they are refused a request, they are firmly told the reason for this and not then allowed to learn to cajole the parent.

Prof Susskind’s 30MW showed this extra communication and stimulation was crucially given while the child’s brains were still plastic, and so created many more synaptic connections.

The result of this is that middle-class kids began primary school a measured 18 months more advanced that their peers - who, most of them, NEVER caught up.

Every parent wants the best for their child but the above account shows that some do not know how because their own parents did not know how.

It is all in the first three or four years of life.

Google

"Professor Dana Suskind 30 Million Words Tune in Talk more brightly"

              My Solution for our society - lessons in parenting

I believe our Snowflake Generation was created as parenting skills have been lost over several generations since the war - esp in deprived class families - and even more for the huge proportion of fatherless kids

My first suggested solution is that the classroom teaching of parenting should be as real and important an area of teaching as that of Maths, Reading, History, Geography and so on.

During their training, Secondary School teachers AND Primary School teachers should be taught how to put across the basics of parenting to their classes as a preparation for their own future responsibilities towards their own children.

AND do this right from the get-go in first-year primary, then to be reinforced every year into secondary school so that young adults leave school at 18 with 13 years of the taught skills sets and knowledge needed to raise families.

Jim Murray

Features that occur in the UK’s top state schools like Michaela Community School - where here is NO CLASSROOM MISBEHAVIOUR

Such as complete banning of mobiles, zero tolerance on classroom misbehaviour, and in the case of Michaela, Katharine Birbalsingh’s the removal of teacher overtime duties in their own time of lesson planning and marking.

These two enable Michaela teachers to arrive fresh and unstressed every morning and ready to teach AND keep order.

Lesson plans are recorded year on year so there is no need for teachers continually to reinvent the wheel

CA portfolio of common lesson plans based on a parallel set of core materials are produced in school time.

This means that any replacement teacher knows instantly where is a particular class in the curriculum.

Such plans however are continually changed and so kept fresh by the teachers themselves inschool as new ideas are tried out and inserted - gradually honing the very best results.

Homework is set using worksheets, again common and centrally created which consolidate that day’s lessons and prepare for the next days lessons.

It is marked by the kids themselves in and assessed by means of quizzes.

It works because the kids take responsibility for how well they are taking in the core materials of knowledge.

The teachers give out merits and demerits depending on the actions of the kids being worthy of praising or criticising. The give out six times the number of merits than demerits. Tow demerits in a day means a no-excuse detention that evening after school.

Detention mostly deals with the action or omission that created the demerits.

It is explained why the misbehaviour affects the pupil themself and their future life as well as the effect on the fellow pupils.

The important point is the critique is of the behaviour and not the child.

This is because they threat the pre-adult as malleable and their behaviour traits therefore able to be changed - the idea is not to break the child to emphasise to the pupil how to succeed and conversely how to fail.

And so, the pupil is allowed to improve of their own choice.

Michaela expels about one pupil per year - mostly for safety reasons of for example bringing a knife into school.

Its intake is non-selective - which would be easy to filter - but by ballot from a very deprived catchment in Brent London, with over a quarter on free school meals and a higher proportion than average of SEND kids.

The teaching is by teachers who clearly love the pupils there - I have visited with my wife.

The kids are smiling, joyous, full of enthusiasm.

The Labour Minister, Bridget Phillipson and all Labour MPs refuse to visit the school - as do the teaching unions.

Jim Murray

We may end up home educating our son, who should be at GCSE level but is very far behind. He has home tuition for English and Maths, but currently working at KS2 level, and is doing Sociology and Psychology GCSEs online. When he's ready to take the exams we would pay for him to do them privately. It'll probably take him longer, but we're hoping he will get the five GCSEs he needs to move on to college at some point.

I mean, this can happen to school educated kids too. Parents dictating their options or making choices that disrupt their ability to reach their potential. The majority of parents who home educate do so with their child's best interests at heart, and will be led by them.

If they want to go to uni, parents will generally go down the exam route.

DD isn't sure what she wants to do after compulsory education yet (she's only 11) but we've decided that she'll do GCSEs in Maths, English Lang & Lit, Sciences and whatever else interests her, to give her plenty of options. She will sit GCSE Sociology in summer 2026, and IGCSE Environmental Management the following year, so she's getting a head start on it.

I'd imagine she'll go to college for A Levels / vocational courses when she's 16, but I don't know.

Having just read the Wiki info on this, it sounds very similar to the French school system and what my children experience now - i.e. very little group work, Children sit in rows and learn largely by rote with lots of exercises for homework. Pupils memorise poems, and read a lot of French and English literature. Respect for adults is systemic and ultimate authority of the largely very strict ‘Profs’ seems to be universally accepted. There is much less accepted interference from parents in our personal experience also. My children were amazed at the difference in the classroom and how quiet the lessons were from their previous UK based Secondary and Primary schools. My DSs are fortunate not to require SEN support though for which I’m grateful because SEN provision in their school seems to be virtually non-existent. Those children that are disruptive seem to just disappear, presumably kicked out. It would be a different story if we did need SEN support I expect, but right now, it’s the happiest my DSs have ever been in school and they are thriving. I was worried about what I had heard regarding strictness of French schools generally but am now grateful for it. (Edited for typos)