To believe that we need to create two hundred more Grammar Schools for the Shires of England.

It is my local school, GCSE attainment and progress is signficantly below national average which is unusual for the area of London. It is known as the party school and run by a happy clappy young Christian head full of young enthusiastic teachers who mean well but can’t control the demographic. There isn’t assault and the kids have fun and seem happy, but the behaviour is chaotic and the results lag all the other local schools. Most higher attainers leave straight after GCSEs and go onto the higher performing schools at that point.

Yes we have two very decent comprehensives in the wider area but the catchment price is an extra 25% on your house price/rent - add in stamp duty, it is not affordable for many. And the catchment gets smaller every year despite the birth rate going down.
And then we have the usual strict schools like certain well known chains. Some people like that, I don’t.
DS’ grammar is not strict at all, it is all about the pastoral and growth mindset.

I think I may have not explained my point properly. I get schools have to make some allowances for children with additional needs. But surely you can see why a 9/10 year old might struggle with being told off for the same thing a peer is allowed to get away with? And if children see some children being allowed to do things, they think 'well if they can, so can I' and it only makes the disruption worse.

I do feel for teachers, they are working under very challenging conditions imposed on them by successive governments trying to cost save and impose an agenda of integration, no matter the consequences

And the issue is behaviour. We seem to have to choose between military discipline or chaos. This is it the choice we’re are given but the reality is decent comprehensives exist, with supportive parents and good behaviour.

We blame the teachers and the behaviour policy and blah blah blah but it’s down to the parents.

What on earth makes you think that a school that is absolute chaos on behaviour with low attainment has happy kids?

I mean, I've taught in one, and I can assure you that it wasn't a happy place.

You'd choose '1)' where girls are routinely sexually assaulted in corridors and teachers are regularly attacked by pupils and think you can make up for it with a bit of tutoring?

So my friend tells me whose daughter has developed EBSA. It is factually accurate that a lot of girls with SEND/anxiety fly under the radar and then turn that anxiety inwards. It seemed plausible. I believed her.

In any event, it is not relevant to most grammar schools. They don’t really have many petty rules in most grammar schools, because they don’t need to. And they certainly don’t have them in most private schools.

So @noblegiraffe if you are asking me what I would choose if my only choices were between 2 schools 1) absolute chaos on behaviour, low attainment, but happyish kids and 2) military style grades cult with rules for everything and isolation rooms, Then yes, I am going to choose 1 until Sixth Form and tutor on the side, worst case keep my kid off 1 day a week on my day off and homeschool them. Even if it means offending the absence policy. If that is all the system would offer me, I would do it.

And now all of a sudden the child who was talking when they weren't meant to is instead being bullied by a child who doesn't have SEND but a teacher who is making it up.

And this is why sensible conversations about behaviour policies can't happen, and behaviour policies that improve behaviour can't be implemented. And then people say they don't want to send their kid to state schools and we are back where we started.

Is that documented SEND or just one of those supposed needs based teacher assessed boys with ADHD? And absolutely if you have a perfectionist prone anxious child who supposedly breaks a rule because some idiot wanted them to get in trouble and deliberately hid their equipment, I would be complaining. And asking for my child’s anxious perfectionist needs to be recognised as well.

Thankfully none of my kids have any of those issues, but the above happens to a lot of my friends. It’s not something people just make up on the internet.

And then schools get told off for sanctioning the swearing kid due to their SEND.

Schools literally can’t win. We absolutely aren’t allowed to apply rules consistently but we also aren’t allowed to tell the kids/parents why swearing child is getting away with it.

If she was talking when she wasn’t meant to be talking then please don’t go on about ‘unfair’ or ‘petty’.

No, I backed the teacher when my daughter got kept in after forgetting to bring in her homework for the 3rd time.
I backed them when they told the class they were acting stupidity, after many parents complained.

However, rules have to be applied consistently. Absolutely my daughter should be told off if talking when not supossed to be, but when she sees a couple of the boys keep shouting and swearing with no consequences, and her being told off when talking quietly, she has a right to feel this is unfair.

I did see a programme where there is a school which does this. The boy was so embarrassed that his mum was there that his behaviour did improve for a while afterwards. It did help that she acknowledged his behaviour issues rather than saying the teachers were lying, and engaged with the process. Many parents wouldn't and the school has no way to make them.

This is exactly what I'm talking about.

Whinging when your kid gets caught in a rule that you consider petty, then campaigning to get those rules removed and the behaviour policy changed makes behaviour worse.

"Teachers need the ability to impose discipline" "oh but not like that" "or that"

Parents want their kids to go to a school where low level disruption is dealt with and miscreants are sent out so long as it's not their child.

I think the growing consensus on the thread is that it’s not the type of school it’s the behaviour in the school. We had very strict schools with corporal punishment and that harmed many children, in some schools we’ve flipped the other way and the “all shall have prizes” model has failed. We need a strong way forward, where schools can discipline but more importantly parents step up and parent.

Parents should be made to sit on classes when their offspring continually behaves badly!

„The sort of parents who would complain about poor behaviour are also the ones who kick off about isolation rooms or heaven forbid a consequence for not having a pen.“

OK but it’s justified if you happen to have a good quiet kid who is rule conforming barely says anything whilst half the class is low level permanently disruptive - and then on one day your rule abiding anxiety prone kid gets punished for not having their red or green pen (which often got stolen by another disrupter in the first place). And teachers often do this to make a statement. It’s petty and creativity stifling. And those rules don’t even exist for that type of kid in the first place.

It would be helpful if parents were actually supportive when schools try to crack down on poor behaviour.

The sort of parents who would complain about poor behaviour are also the ones who kick off about isolation rooms or heaven forbid a consequence for not having a pen.

Heard a trailer for this, next Saturday at 8pm.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00316l1

Both things are possible. I think grammar is a terrible system, but equally I will try to 'buy' my daughter out of the poorly performing schools - it's not even about her grades for us, it's about her being somewhere where she feels happy and able to learn and that she feels like she 'fits'. It's been a bit mindblowing for us seeing the difference in her emotionally coming out of sessions with engaged children vs coming out of her 'chaotic' school days where she is just drained from fighting to focus.

Schools need greater ability to crack down on poor behaviour, with consequences for non engagement for children and their families.

Absolutely, I was often in trouble at secondary as I was the bored able kid who finished my work in a few mins as it was set to low to mid ability level, and then I chatted to whoever I could distract. Children asked me to come over to their desk to help because the teacher was too busy controlling others to help them, and I got in trouble as I was supossed to be setting the good example sitting quietly and I should 'know better'.

My school didn't cover any of the curriculum needed to get higher than a B, I needed A's and A*'s to get my uni place, so I taught myself the harder curriculum from study books. One of my teachers did 1 to 1 lessons for me in return for me babysitting his children, he recognised the school was failing me. I did well in spite of my school rather than because of it.

In an ideal world, yes there would be support for all to get jobs. But at the moment those with degrees and great commuinication skills and extra curriculars evidencing their commitment etc are struggling to get jobs and having to take roles way below their skill level to earn money, which then means those roles aren't available for those with lower academic abilities. The current government has cut public sector budgets to the bone, and made it harder for businesses to thrive, leading to a really challenging job market.

I hope this post is not meant to be serious, because if it is is, it is totally shameful and shows a complete lack of understanding of education and child development.

This is a topic that I feel incredibly strongly about. In the U.K. there seems to be an obsession with judging children based on very narrow and skewed criteria. My dd was one of those children who did not stand out of the crowd at that age. She didn’t struggle academically but she didn’t shine in exams. She really hit her stride in her teens and achieved perfect scores in her GCSEs and A levels and is now doing a highly selective degree at university.

And there are badly behaved kids in the most able group especially if they are bored and just expected to get on with it independently, including in primary. Both my girls complained about some of the boisterous but clever boys causing complete havoc and running rings around the teacher.
I would like to think that my 12 year old DS who is academic would be quiet and well behaved in a comp with low attainment and help the teachers out by modelling hood behaviour. But his mind does not sit still, it is always looking for a challenge or debate so I really can’t say for sure what way it could have gone.

That can't always be used as an excuse. Yes, some have an easier start than others, but ultimately we make our own choices, adversity can be used as an excuse or a springboard. My Dad was brought up by 2 unemployed parents, one of whom was a violent alcoholic who kicked him out at 16. He went on to work, got what would be now known as apprenticeship, but at that time was a kind manager helping out a lad who he saw promise in, got an engineering degree and went on to work professionally in a highly respected role. He set his own example, his own behaviour standards. My best friend had a very similar story

There are lovely, hardworking and well-behaved kids in the bottom 25% too.

True. The biggest issue is not the top 25% being removed from the next 50%, but the next 50% having to be educated alongside the bottom 25%.

I mean, I totally understand parents' desire to get the best education for their child and to do what's needed keep them out of a crap school, we are never going to be able to change that.

But a golden ticket model of education where some kids can 'win' a better school by being clever (and tutored - I was just reading some grammar school tutoring thread and it was honestly shocking) isn't a good system for a country. I can understand parents who want an 'out' of a crap school thinking that more golden tickets is the answer, but it can't be.

What about the nice, well-behaved kid who wants a disruption-free classroom so that they can learn who has no chance of a golden ticket because they're not academic and whose parents aren't wealthy enough to buy their way out? The golden ticket system doesn't work for them at all.

Parents whose children won a golden ticket may well think that the golden ticket is great because it worked for them but it can't, by definition, work for everyone.

Then you have the problem where the existence of the golden ticket schools make the rest of the schools in the area worse.

If you had a kid in primary school who was lovely but non-academic and you were in charge of designing the school system for the local area, there's no way you'd decide that grammars were the way forward.