Do your strict British schools get good academic results?

Could you provide some figures for those diagnoses?

Any selective school will look good on league tables because the less academically able will have been weeded out at 11, so your point about excellent GCSE results isn't really relevant.

We have lower adhd diagnosis than a lot of the developed world. 50% lower.

Undiagnosed ND is a main factor is prison populations. And costs the NHS ( l think- may have to check this ) £7billion a year.

They are under diagnosed disabilities not ‘catch alls’

And for what it’s worth, the admission criteria for Michaela prioritises siblings, staff children and then it’s a random allocation of children within 5 miles.

Oh read the post. I never said they don’t exist, but that they are a convenient catch all that absolves society of asking harder questions about the quality of our classrooms. It’s far easier these days to chuck a kid down the SEN route than understand what is actually going on in classrooms, and fund and adapt those classrooms accordingly. There’s literally a thread on here full of SEN parents desperate for schools with quiet, ordered, regulated classrooms for their academically able kids.

Not everything is a personal attack on you.

😡😡😡😡😡

Adhd destroyed my DD’s life for 5 years. She was hardworking and polite and we brought her up like that.

Oh to be able to say such glib and ignorant comments.

It does fucking exist. You can see it in brain scans.

And dyslexia is now viewed as one of the ‘D’s’ and is considered part of ND.

Tell me you’re ignorant without telling me you’re ignorant.

Tbh I agree with what she says about dyslexia and ADHD - I think in many cases they are not the result of any underlying pathology, but a response to poor classroom or home environments combined with teaching not meeting that child’s needs (difficult when it’s one teacher to 30 kids in a disruptive classroom). Combined with the slackness of the diagnostic criteria for those conditions, I think she’s not wrong.

And I’m absolutely on board with dententions for not bringing a pen. That’s the absolute basics of turning up to school, and I bet none of those kids have ever forgotten their phones, have they?

The headteacher once claimed on Twitter that none of her pupils had ADHD. Can’t find it again now (it was a while ago) but did find this from an interview in The Times:

My DCs go to a relatively strict school.

Detentions for forgetting a pen or text book. Interestingly, when it happened to mine it never happened again. It did what it required, so I'm happy with that.

The school also provides strong pastoral care, so I feel it has a good balance and is firm but fair.

There's also a strong correlation between absence and exam outcomes. Hence the focus on attendance.

What amazes me, are some parents who thing attendance levels that would not be acceptable in the workplace are ok for children at school. (Usual caveat that children with medical conditions are except from that statement).

Encouraging discipline and work ethic is good for all school students, regardless of what they do once they've completed school. Unless they go for a life of crime, perhaps.

Not everyone can go to university.,,,,,

Why should the less able be disregarded? Isn’t this discrimination?

I’ve always wondered is it because they only cherry pick certain parts of it or do not give it time for I bed in before moving on to the next fad.

Strictness can be subjective. My DDs are at what is known as the "strict" school in our LEA. I find it nowhere near as strict as my own school days. Wrong shoes for example... they will lend the child the right type for a few days (or even just give them if its a financial problem) rather than going straight to a strike. (3 strikes is a detention). There is a part of me that thinks its ridiculous that apparently my child can't learn efficiently wearing trainers instead of shoes but I understand that uniform codes do need firm lines.
It also has the best GCSE scores and Progress scores in the city... but its one of the more affluent areas. (But covers everything from £1million+ homes to farming and ex coal villages to a council estate... its just typical of the general area really. Most importantly a lot of the parents care deeply about education so support the school. Parents evenings are always ramned, parents turn up to watch sports matches, the school productions sell out multiple nights etc.

So its not one factor making it a successful school. Its a range of factors.

Generally the schools with the best results have parents who are engaged with their dc’s education and are academically able themselves. Obviously private schools (non Sen) fit this criteria as parents who don’t care wouldn’t pay for private, of state schools it tends to either me those who are selective (again makes sense) or those in areas where there’s lots of schools and parents who are willing to push get the places, strict schools are popular with parents so the sharpest elbows (involved parents) get the places. Disruptive pupils are a major issue in schools.

all that said, my local high school, only one in my town, gets good results, top 15% nationally and has lax uniform based on what they look like traveling to school, and isn’t known to be strict, quite artsy in fact but the predominant demographic in my town is affluent (huge upmarket development tripling the population) meaning that the dc at the school are mostly advantaged

The school, with traditionally quite poor results that I’ve worked at for decades has suddenly become extremely strict - detentions for the wrong socks/ forgotten pens etc. It has had an amazing impact in the classroom - suddenly low level disruption has disappeared and students are listening and working hard. No doubt our results will skyrocket.

My DC go to a private selective school that often tops the league tables. It’s not strict in the sense of petty rules.

No uniform. Very few detentions (neither DC has had one, and that’s true for most of the pupils). No rules on hair colour or make up. No problem with time off to for music or other extracurricular opportunities, but with the expectation that it’s their responsibility to work out what they’ve missed, and catch up. Lots of taking responsibility for their own learning and taking the hit (in terms of doing less well than they hoped) if they don’t.

It only works for DC who actually enjoy learning and / or are conscientious. DC who are bright but lazy tend to be pushed by their parents (who are paying a lot and very invested) - the school supports but won’t spoon feed or nag.

Yes, in my experience (based on the half a dozen state secondary schools in my local town) the stricter schools tend to get better academic results.

Ours are at an independent. I’d say it’s much less strict than the local comps for the “small stuff” - eg uniform infringements are a chat with the pupil and an informal email home. An incident of WhatsApp bullying however was taken extremely seriously - Saturday detention and agreeing an “at home” punishment with the parents.

They are suppressing potential.

Kids rebel.

One of my friends is a teacher in a fairly average comprehensive- average in terms of ability range and socioeconomics. She has told me that since the pandemic the behaviour has dramatically worsened. She said they are now getting kids throwing chairs in classrooms, which has never happened before.

It is a good school. I used to be a governor at the same school. The head always used to say that behaviour management was the top priority because without that, education could not happen.

So, I imagine schools are getting tougher and tougher on behaviour because it is getting worse. There is another thread on here about how adult behaviour has been worse since the pandemic too - there is a lot talk of people sitting in public transport having speaker phone calls out loud or playing music out loud.

I would take issue with 'same correlation in any school anywhere'.

There are more ways of achieving academic success than detentions for infractions of silly uniforms.

I worked as a TA at a school in Central London for 1 term and felt the same. Things were so strict in a way that just felt disrespectful to the students' humanity. One example- I was in PE with year 7s when a girl got her period and I had to escort her inside to use the toilet (fair enough). All the toilets were locked. Eventually I had to ask another passing member of staff where I could take her, which was a single unlocked toilet on the 3rd floor. This was humiliating for her and disruptive as it took 3 times as long as if we could have used the nearest one.

Other rules included one that pupils must have a reading book with them at all times, for quiet reading. It had to be from the school library, and you had to log your progress in a journal thing. If you were found to have finished your book and not sourced another before the next lesson, you would get a detention.

Plus the standard constant uniform nitpicking, lack of self expression (had to use standard issue stuff right down to pencil cases), lack of bodily autonomy, and so on. I hated being there so left.

I think the current British obsession with strictness is counterproductive. As for results: the best British schools are excellent but with all the ways of massaging the statistics, it's hard to say for sure that it produces academic results. I know that I would never have chosen to put my SEN children in Michaela or similar; I know they could never comply with the rules. So even if Michaela don't counsel out SEN pupils, they may discourage some from applying.

My experience has been that rules need to be clear and enforced, but that they need not be draconian. On MN people seem to act as if the only choices are this sort of rigid discipline or chaos, nothing in between.

Yes it’s called discipline. They weed out the ones that aren’t interested and won’t go on to further education so that more time can be spent on those that work hard

My English school was like that (issuing detentions for uniform infractions, for example). I hated it but I've come to recognise that the discipline served precisely that purpose - to avoid the sort of breakdown that @FeistyFrankie describes. The best solution to that is not to have that situation develop in the first place. I learned a lot of things that my kids just weren't taught at their NZ schools. There's also an expectation in NZ that parents help complete homework (rather than just setting expectations), even at high school level. I just got on with it myself when I was at school because I knew I'd be in detention and in trouble if I didn't hand it in on time. A bit of fear is good.