Schools/acamedies are actually inhumane for students and staff alike! Long post...

Massive typo in your title OP.

4/10 Can do better.

Are you joking? There's so much wrong with what you said. The 'comprehensive' education idea has utterly failed because guess what, not all the kids are same. Abilities, ambitions, skills, SEN, parental support, access to extras..an endless list of why 'levelling' doesn't work and only ever seems to look down, not up. What you call 'pigeonholing' I call 'recognising each child's areas of strength and having a varied curriculum available from y9 onwards with flexibility and guidance to allow students to move across to different pathways or even mix and match. Tricky to manage but not impossible with vision, imagination and funding. But those are the things that have been lacking in education reforms for decades. I have some hope that AB new widening of the curriculum is a step in the right direction.

But that is small for a secondary! We have 600 students in our sixth form alone! And my DDs primary was 3 form entry and 600 pupils too.

I don’t recognise this version of English schools at all. My kids are at a state school secondary and having a fabulous time. Teachers are firm but fair. They have a broad education in a wide range of subjects, good friends and are making solid progress.

The nearest small school (around 600 pupils) is shit. Flexi schooling is a shit idea that would actively damange the outcomes of millions of children to keep some minority of chattering class happy.

If by “failed” you mean the only Western education system where children are actually at least keeping pace or improving on their ability in reading and mathematics, then yes, English schools are failing.

Comments like these honestly ..And that’s why I left teaching …!

“it’s on the board, get started guys ..” as I greeted students and checked everyone was ok at the door . Then we cracked on because there be enough once the last straggler was through the door ! Bell task pfft . Honestly I remember once a guy retiring around 2010in the end of term drinks before everyone dashes off and he gifted us a little clock wheel thing that we had to make out of two circles of card and a split pin. We had to make it whilst he did his thank yous . The template been photocopied from a tes article from the late 70s - it was an educational gobbledegook term generator . Things like differentiated endpoint or learning goal - one preposterous combo was currently in vogue then ! 😂

The regs will cover that. You put your life in the hands of technology all the time. That is why there are so many regs. If you are sat on a sofa, that sofa has regs. Drive a car ? Regs. Fire alarm.. Regs. Fire escapes routes... lots of regs. Including Fire brigade checks for public access building.

Also fire drills in schools. A legal requirement.

Fire Regulations and Legal Requirements for Schools in the UK - Monks Security (monks-security.co.uk)

If you think it’s inhumane, then times that by 10 for SEND kids and families. I’m currently on the edge of a break down and having to take sleeping tablets that aren’t working, taking time off sick, all because my child is autistic

Indeed. But according to the OP, in the 90s it was all small schools where the teachers knew everybody...

My secondary school wasn’t an academy but had almost 2000 pupils and the teachers couldn’t cope at all. It was a terrible school, this was in the 00s. Fights were a daily occurrence, smoking was normal, some kids would be smoking pot at the main gates as you walked in, we all just did whatever the hell we felt like including walking out of school if we wanted… It was like Lord of the Flies.

I think the 30 min lunch is a great idea. Stops kids pissing about and getting into fights.

I dont think primary schools are doing too badly in that regard, my expertise and experience is with secondary and the 3-4 years many kids spend in them being dragged through a horrendous curriculum of dated, irrelevant texts in English, abstract, incredibly technical content in maths and science that they'll never use or remember and becoming so disaffected they come out with few qualifications and a feeling of failure. Much better to recognise reality and provide functional skills for all at 14 followed by a varied pathway of options beyond that.

I was badly bullied by my class teacher in the last year of primary in the 1970s. I had a breakdown at secondary school as a result.

I had some brilliant inspiring teachers but some also useless ones. I had a Latin teacher who loved talking about Roman sex. She was great! I also had a Biology teacher who also talked very openly about sex and relationships- she was also excellent. Maths and German teachers also outstanding. For English I had a series of incompetents, one in particular who spent a whole double lesson playing us the soundtrack to Fiddler on the Roof. My A-Level Physics teacher was a very nice guy but not a good teacher - he didn’t have any qualifications in physics or teaching.

We all thought one of the PE teachers was a perv. Twenty years later, I found out we were right - she was imprisoned for paedophilia!!!

The big academy chain our area fits what you say OP , too large and homogeneous across all its schools. I thought the original purpose of a self governing school was to give freedom , that is not the case.

Only of there is enough capacity for them all to access food and the toilet in that 30 minutes, which there rarely is.

Yes. My school has just introduced a ‘do now’ task which is to be done on entry to the room (now to be calm and in silence), which is separate from the lesson starter.

Neither of my DDs schools or the one my DH teaches at are like this, lucky I suppose we don’t have any academies here. There are problems for sure but on the whole they’re nice schools

Let's hope the mechanism doesn't mis-function

It’s staggered at my DC’s school. Year 7 go alone, year 8 and 10 share and 9 and 11 share at different times.

The academy system appears to be far from perfect, as someone who only gets 30 mins for lunch in my top, I totally agree it is inadequate, and the draconian rules around toilets need reviewing, as difficult as it is may be to do so.

However compare this to Wales where the recent PISA results show the average Welsh kid is performing at the standard of the poorest performing English kid, with reading and maths two years behind their English peers.

Be careful what you wish for!!

It isnt a a academies forcing short lunches. Its behaviour and lack of funding. My sons school had short lunches before it joined to an academy when he wss in year 9 so when it was LA maintained.

Schools cant staff it. Schools that are staffing longer lunches will be doing things like offering less subjects or have more pp funding that offsets it.

I m not suggesting academies are perfect and there will be badly run ones doung a crap job, but some of these examples are just pretty standard responses to managing budgets and behaviour across LA and Academy schools.

Yes, huge cuts in school funding over the years has meant that things have had to become more efficient and nice-to-haves disappeared long ago.

Shorter lunch times not only mean that kids have less time to piss around and vandalise stuff/start a fight, it also means that the school doesn't have to hire lunch staff for as long as time. It means that the school can close earlier which means that the lights don't have to be on for as long. I was also going to say that the heating doesn't have to be on for as long, but the heating is switched off long before the end of the school day in my school.

With a severe shortage of teachers, centralised PowerPoints and resources are the only way that a school can ensure that teachers who don't know the subject they are teaching is actually delivered in some sort of structured way.

I mean, I was posting about the school funding crisis and the teacher recruitment crisis for a long time and people didn't seem to give a shit, so here we are.

Well, as it's done through the alarm circuit being completed so that if the alarm is going, no current goes to the locks to be able to keep the doors shut (the default is open, like a doorbell is off until it is switched on), plus this also means a power cut or fire would also make them open, physics makes this a somewhat implausible situation.

This seems very school specific. My DD is year 6 so I've toured various local schools lately and don't recognise what you describe. Some of what you describe isn't new. I was at secondary school in the 90s and we always has a one way system with in-doors and out-doors, because the corridor was narrow. Same as when my dad was at the same school in the 60s. We always moved between lessons (because sometimes you need a science lab, workshop etc) and we always got the bus - because the school served lots of villages. Maybe it was different where you were. Like I said, different schools do things differently. And I hated the long lunchtime. I would have preferred the 30 break and earlier home time. Most kids brought packed lunch anyway because the school dinners were awful!

I was at school in the early 90s, to be fair it was a huge split site comp now closed and it was hideous then. Lunch was too long as we were kicked outside in all weathers to stand in the rain and wind. There was nothing to do and no shelter. Then come back dripping and cold for the afternoon.

Lessons were very disturbed by behavioural issues. I once counted and there was about 20 minutes of disjointed teaching times in an hour long lesson. Anyone bright enough got questions the teacher asked of them wrong on purpose so that they didn't stand out.
In mixed ability classes, easily more than 60% couldn't read well enough to get any learning from the 'read these paragraphs in the textbook and answer the questions' style of teaching.

I have lots of sympathy for the plight of students and teachers in academies if your description is accurate (I have no experience of them) , but maybe they've tried to fix the problems I've described?

Not know properly, but know of, 750 wouldn’t be too hard. I’m in a 5-form entry school (plus larger sixth form) of 1200 and I’d say I know at least two thirds of every year group reasonably well (usually because I’ve taught them over the years) and know a reasonable number of others by sight/by name because they are known for good things or bad!