To think disruptive behaviour in schools is out of hand?

@Absentosaur

Every child has a right to an education. It is a basic human right. To take away that right IS dehumanising. I’d say lumping kids you don’t ’take to’ and carting them off to an institution which is out of their community and is likely to give them worse opportunities and outcomes is dehumanising. The way you talk about children - CHILDREN - is shocking.

SEN yes. Shitty parents possibly.

@Absentosaur

There are marches going on in London today? You could join and hold a banner saying ‘deport all disruptive kids’? Might make you feel better.

These kids you have described are not SEN they just shit parents.

Agree. And usually these are the parents that have multiple children and dont properly look after them/nurture them. The neglect = anger and attention seeking.

Thats sad 😥 poor kid.

@Absentosaur

Bloody hell! So let’s cart an 11year old child off to some kind of educational borstal
and lump them with other children we’d rather reject from society so they can fester together - and then what? Let them out to commit crime? Or remove them from society completely - a jail? A camp? Cart them off to an island?
The problem is we are developing into a society that is so focussed on our own individualism and chance to prosper - that we are more than happy to dehumanise others, even children. Even 5 year olds.

I know.
It's ridiculous.
A while ago I went into a branch of Poundland on a Saturday. The average age of the staff looked to be 60 (and they looked tired and fed up).
I used to work retail and weekend staff was almost all 16-18 year olds (except supervisors/management).
Weekends and school holidays the staff was all enthusiastic 6th Form/College kids who wanted to be there and worked hard.

Yes I mentioned that upthread.
Even for Saturday/Weekend jobs it's currently ridiculously hard for under 18s to get jobs.

One of my GC has an autistic child and one with SEN in his class at state primary. The class normally has a teacher and a TA, and often an extra specialised TA too, which means that there is little disruption. The DM of the autistic child is not willing to leave mainstream school, though she has been offered a place and the parents of the other child cannot find a place as there is a shortage locally. Their funding pays for the extra staff.

Our school has a high proportion of children for whom English is a second language but again they get extra help and the parents of most of these children are very supportive of the school if behavioural problems arise. They understand how important education is, though some of the local English parents do not and would always support their children if they are being badly behaved.

Most problems in our school are due to NT children who are badly behaved, but the school deals with it well. Problems in secondary school are far more difficult to deal with IMO.

I agree!

Most of the SEN kids could be helped with TAs in a lot of cases, the real issue is the badly behaved (non SEN kids), and they should be expelled / PRUs.

I remember having them in my class in the 90s, the boy who would try to undo the girls bra straps in class, the girl throwing balls of papers at the teacher when he was writing on the board, the ones smoking in the toilet or putting wet loo roll everywhere, etc etc These are the ones who should not be allowed to disrupt the education of others!

@Fearfulsaints we have a closed down school near us - it used to educate about 800 children. It is set in beautiful grounds. The secondary school near us is now building an extension for SEN children whilst the closed school, in the town centre, near the train station is going to be pulled down to build houses on the site!

A lot of companies won't even take on under 18s due to insurance. My 17 year old would have loved to work at my workplace during the summer, and could easily do the work, but they won't take on under 18s.

I think you are a good example of a struggling, but clearly very engaged parent who is doing everything possible to ensure your child is supported well enough not to disrupt others. I am sympathetic and also believe that many on this thread are blind to the issues good parents of SEN children have. They are also generalising and dumping all ND children in together, when in fact there are multiple 'versions' of both ND experiences and ND parents, just as there are NT.

First, there's children who are clearly ND. But their parents, for whatever reason (lack of knowledge, lack of time, lack of resources, lack of interest, or simply that they're so worn down by the behaviour that they've given up,.or whatever) just don't seek support or employ the recommended management strategies. Their children may or may not have been able to thrive in ms but we'll never know, because they're the 'naughty' kids. And because the parents either can't or won't engage, this becomes a huge problem for the teachers and for other children.

Then there's the children whose parents know full well they're ND. They've done all the research, they might still be waiting for diagnoses (or even already have it) and they're fighting for every bit of support possible, both at home and at school. They're experts in ND, perhaps more so than many professionals. They will know whether their child could thrive in ms with the right support, or needs a specialist setting. The LA doesn't listen to parents, though. For these kids, successful inclusion in ms might be the right thing, or it might not. But while the LA is dragging its heels, delaying issuing EHCPs and generally not dealing with the situation, the situation gets worse and worse - for the child, their parents, the teachers, other children.

Then there's the different types of ND. My 8yo dd is on the autism diagnosis pathway and currently thriving in an extremely supportive (not private) mainstream school. We fought for her EHCP because her difficulties were very hidden at school and resulted in EBSA. She's well behaved at school, wants to do well. She's bright, socially motivated. And this week she's been home in tears twice because she's sitting next to a ND boy who sings and hums (noise triggers for her), and repeatedly knocks her glue stick down on purpose (a personal space and control trigger for her). She knows enough about herself now to use her personal resources put in place for her. So she used her movement break card so that she could retreat to the book corner for the remainder of the lesson.

My point being that some SEN children - who may fall into one of the above categories - become disruptive to all children, including other ND children. But I'm not going to sit here and blame his parents, because I have an understanding that it's not his fault, nor necessarily his parents' fault. They're likely victims of the convoluted and opaque 'system' that currently exists.

I'm very much in favour of inclusion in ms schools for well supported ND children who are, or are capable of, thriving - both the currently 'disruptive' and undisruptive ones. But 'inclusion' at the moment isn't working for anyone.

The root cause of behaviour problems in schools is size.

No school should have more than 500 pupils.

No class should have more than 15 pupils.

More schools, with smaller cohorts and classes, and a considerably reduced ratio of children to the number of teachers, would result in an environment where each child was truly known and their individual needs could be provided for.

Most schools are so large that children become anonymous cogs in a huge machine where no teacher or leadership team member can have a hope in hell of knowing all the kids in their care and the children therefore have no sense of truly being cared for.

When you feel that no one cares, you don’t care, and you don’t want to be there.

In smaller schools with smaller class sizes you can do more hands on, interactive, project based learning, because you don’t have as many bodies in a room and you as the teacher can spend meaningful time with each child and group to support and guide them as they work more independently. You can easily take a whole year group out on trips when there’s only 50 kids in a year as opposed to 200, which means you get to take kids out more and engage them beyond the classroom. Smaller classes build stronger bonds and they feel more like a community. In that environment, bullying and disruptive behaviour is more rare, as the children respect and care for each other more than when half the people in their class are practically strangers to them.

Rather than throwing money at behaviour tsars and academy chains and online curriculums, the government needs to invest money in reducing school and class sizes. It will take time, but if that became the norm, teacher recruitment and retention would also improve, and we’d be in a much better position to educate all children in an environment that was nurturing and inspiring, and not some kind of quasi prison designed to control and subdue.

We also need to stop expecting all children to pass an arbitrary collection of exams at 16 and provide genuine alternatives for those who aren’t academic - scrapping GCSEs is long overdue and a wholesale rethink of how we assess students needs to happen urgently. Too many children have mental health issues related to high stakes exams and we need to move towards a better model involving continuous assessment and teacher evaluation. It’s 2025 and we’re still stuck in the factory style approach to education created in the nineteenth century. It’s so depressing.

There's a kid living behind me who sounds about 11 or 12 and when the family arguments spill i to the garden he screams and growls at his parents, he tells them he hates them, threatens to kill them, threatens to kill himself. They sit and mild mannerly try to reason with him but he doesn't care! What ever they tell him he can't do, he just tells them that he will be doing it, he has absolutely no fear of repercussions and I always think how the hell does his school cope with such extreme rages and refusal to conform!
And it does annoy me when I'm trying to enjoy the sun in my garden and they let him rage in the garden for extended periods!

The problem is what are they going to do at 14 with nothing to do everyday, 17 / 18 year olds are struggling to find work opportunities, society doesn't need streets full of 14 year olds getting up to no good.

I think the law would need to change before 14 year olds could work.

There would be issues with dbs checks, safeguarding and insurance.

At the moment many companies will not employ anyone under 18.

If the 14 year is enthusiastic, wants to be there and gets on with the job then why shouldn't they be employed?

In rural areas this idea wouldn't work but actually you dont need to build new buildings. Its the same amount of children overall, they just need distributing differently.

In my particular area, which is a mix of urban and rural. 2 schools have closed down and the buildings are sat empty, yet there are children with no suitable education sat at home.

I think its the running costs of staffing these provisions will proper staff thats the issue.