AIBU to feel angrey after Holland Park School open morning?

Yes, I've heard (1) from a Russian I know.

Re (2), I've been researching Russian schools since reading OPs posts and 'militiaristic propoganda' comes up a lot, but no mentions so far of gardening clubs nor respect for pupils! 🤣

Thank goodness none of my employers were like that. One day I got stuck in my flat (door wouldn't open, landlord had to send someone out to fix it) and a different employer, before I went on maternity leave I was nearly always late, because I walked there and I really started to struggle, especially with dizzy spells that meant I'd need to stop and rest. Nearly collapsed on a woman coming out of the school I walked past.

Wonder how some of these schools would deal with any students who were pregnant. My old school locked the toilets during lessons and you needed to go to reception to get the key. Thankfully this after I left. I was barely going to school at all when I was in secondary. I think I'd have refused school completely if I'd have been in some of these places.

My parents/grandparents have been through the Soviet education system and I got two take-aways:

(1) the quality of the education they received (bar the dodgy communism history crap) was actually very high;
(2) it was definitely not a nurturing environment 😅.

I went in Soviet school and honestly, even they didn’t have detention rooms.
I don't think Soviet schools would need a detention room as they probably have other methods of dealing with troublesome students ....
I wonder whether OP would be likely to publicly post her dislike of the colour of curtains in a local school if she was still in Russia?
I don't know whether free vacations in Siberia are still a thing, but I feel sure the authorities do have other ways of rewarding such creative efforts!

I disagree. Not having a pen is not telling you anything about this child’s attitude to learning. It only tells you he hasn’t got his pen right now. Very easily remedied by ‘can someone lend X a pen’ and carry on, letting the child catch up after a few seconds/ a min delay.

When in year 3 my dc had this teacher telling me his ruler lines are not straight, his cutting and gluing not neat and it shows his ‘attitude to learning’. Well, no. He’s learning shows you his attitude to learning - the fact he reads so many books, sits and writes stories with no prompting, attempts every science experiment he comes across in his magazines. And it is a very positive attitude of a very curious child.

Being organised and neat with stationary, etc is a different skill to being a good learner. And teachers who don’t know the difference are not very good at their job.

Unfortunately behaviour in many secondaries is totally out of control now, so schools have to operate like this so that learning can take place and DC can be safe.

Just have a look at some Ofsted reports for inadequate schools to see the alternative.

This one has “planned fights”, “staff receive injuries from pupils”, “pupils and staff feel unsafe”. Students “leave lessons because they want to” and “feel they have to misbehave to fit in.”

Alternatively, at this one, pupils use “racist and homophobic language”, and “vandalism, including offensive graffiti, poor behaviour and bad language are rife.”

“Some of the most vulnerable pupils have suffered violence or harm by other pupils” and “staff have received injuries from pupils.”

”Pupils do not feel safe because of the very poor behaviour” and have “had enough of being jostled and hurt in corridors and verbally abused.”

Schools have definitely changed over the years my youngest has just left school and my eldest is 27 - lots changed in the decade between him attending and my youngest in regards to rules and punishments etc. I’m quite relieved we are finally out of the school system. The transgender stuff was also pushed massively at secondary school to the point half the children were identifying as something other than a person!

Surely good teachers have back up pens for such times where a kid forgets? These kids are not robots. To forget something is human and if can't make mistakes when we are young, when can we?

As you say, we also do not know what sort of life at home they have, some families are dysfunctional and the kid getting to school at all is something! We punish a kid for something small like this teaches them what? The world is unkind, unreasonable and not human. Kids will push back against this kind of punishment if done often enough and it will also make them frustrated.

The problem it that it's the 'little things' such as not bringing equipment to lessons that causes disruptive behaviour. It's not 'just a pen', for example, it's a whole attitude to school and not having to obey the rules. So 'not bringing a pen' results in detention and in having to buy a pen, probably, and this being noted in a diary etc - because it is disruptive behaviour. Can you imagine the problem, the time wasted, in dealing with several DC without a pen? In every classroom? So minor infractions are sanctioned so as to avoid major infractions.
(A good school will have a record of DC with disrupted homelifes who may forget equipment - and a way of dealing with it i.e. keeping their equipment in school for collection at the beginning of each day. Though this could also be disruptive, of course. Difficult.)

But some are more normal than others. And OP has found restrictions on other schools. If she casts her nets further, she could probably find more suitable schools, but may not get in due to distance or religious affiliations.

That is normal for most English secondaries now. Unfortunately 🙁.

Just put them in a normal school

Do you even have kids at school? That's completely normal, in Primary too, not just secondary

these parents always got their first choice, so non issue, thankfully!

The school where John and Sally Bercow were both governors…

unfortunately, finding a good state secondary in inner London is quite a sport.

Did OP say the room was dark?

I thought she had an extreme reaction against the black curtains, presumably not drawn and presumably intended to provide a sun block when necessary.

As I said earlier, my primary school had black curtains and this had no impact whatsoever, except historical interest, that they were wartime blackout curtains.
This, incidentally, has something to say about levels of investment in the classroom environment in the 1960s! 😅

That was years and years ago, and in a 12 form entry school, of course they had to mix with the hoi poloi. It was a completely different school, in a different building with very different ethos. More easy going than most other schools and no uniform at all at one stage.

Too many academies are effectively unregulated and run by people with no background in education, but who think they know what the solution to probems are (usually very simplistic, often work with children who are not likely to be trouble makers anyway. They squeeze the joy out of education and learning.

Yes, schools need to maintain discipline, but this image of uncontrolled children running riot is not a realistic one - retired teacher here, taught in a lot on inner-city schools with troubled children.

Find a school that still maintains the joy of education for your children and one that doesn't borrow from a psychological torture manual to maintain discipline.

@GentleMintCat - Finland was panicking about their PISA scores tanking quite recently. UK scores went up quite substantially with these pushy Tory education reforms. Flip side is draconian discipline in “some” schools. You see if the teachers need to get through an extremely content heavy syllabus right from the start, then what exactly are the options? You either have a selective education system which is considered retro here or you have comprehensives for all with a powering on method in some cases.
My youngest joined a top performing grammar school recently. There is no draconian discipline there. They do not need to do that to teach the content.
There are loads of good comprehensives in London with language and music aptitude tests and some partially selective. You just need to inform yourself and look hard enough. You do not need to send your child to a school that you do not like! I would never send my child to a school that I do not feel comfortable with either.
By Sixth Form most schools are selective and there is a lot more freedom too. So in reality you are just looking for the right 11-16 school for your child. Good luck with your search. At least you are in London where you will get some choice.

You are able to apply to secondary schools in other boroughs, so Hammersmith and Fulham, also Westminster and Camden schools would be accessible to you. While the Catholic schools would expect your to be Catholic, the CofE schools don't expect you to be CofE and for some you wouldn't even need to be nominally Christian.

And if they have a dysfunctional home life, some of those things can be quite hard.

@Sc00byDont when was the last time you did a secondary school tour?
I visited probably a dozen schools. The main tour guides were ALL Year 8 or 9 students who were expected to answer questions.
(obviously the schools pick the best students for this task)

Completely normal.

Where in KCSIE does it say that prospective parents attending open mornings should not be allowed to talk to current pupils??