Common problems at secondary school- your experiences

Another point - a big problem we have is the earlier start to the secondary school day - 8.30 am instead of 9.00 am.

As ds also has a longer journey in the morning, this means he needs to get up one hour earlier than before - around 6.30 am.

In year 7 this earlier morning routing, plus the stress being at a big secondary school meant he was off sick far more than in year 5 or 6. I was told by a school secretary that it is quite common for year 7s to fall ill a lot (the sick book was full of year 7s) until they get used to the new routine.
It took over a year for ds to get over this, during which time he missed 3 or 4 weeks in total of school. Far too much.

Ds is good at getting up, and being on time at school but even now two years later, he comes home exhausted and falls asleep on the sofa for an hour or two. I try to get him to miss his nap and go to bed earlier at night but he resists this a lot. It is a constant battle of wills.

If only school started at 9.00 am, it would be easier and I don't think ds would have missed as much of his schooling in year 7.

Ok, looking back on the two years since my son started secondary school here are the problem areas

1. Lack of communication - not enough parents meetings and no easy way of communicating with individual subject teachers. I appreciate secondary teachers are busy, so I don't want to pester them unless very urgent, but I miss the quick 2 minute chats I could have with teachers at primary school at pick up or drop off time. There is no system in place AFAIK that makes it acceptable to email teachers or write notes with a reply expected.

The result of feeling more cut off is that I have less grip on what my son is meant to be doing at school homeworkwise or the standard of work he is meant to be producing, so it is harder to support/check up on him.

Teachers' comments in homework diaries and school books are often too cryptic and ds won't tell me the whole truth. In two years there have been just two parents meetings - not enough!

2. Pupils openly selling sweets wholesale to other pupils in school. I know secondary school children are not toddlers, but I find it amazing that these little businesses are tolerated, especially as the school has done away with vending machines selling sweets.

3. The school wanting parents to pay for school trips by cheque only and not accepting cash. This is really inconvenient to those of us who cannot guarantee to have money in our current accounts all the time. School cheques can take weeks to be presented IME and I have been charged £35.00 by the bank for a bounced cheque of £5.50.

4. Not enough guidance on homework expectations. See point 1. My son apparently has no holiday homework, but I am wondering if he should have been doing something as he will be in year 9 when he goes back and SATS are looming.

5. Not enough advance information on why year 9 SATS matter, choosing GCSEs and how any setting or streaming can affect GCSE choices and results. I would like to know this right from year 7 - just a general meeting or even a print out with info would be helpful.

That is a tricky one. We have had an open door policy (re loos) for a while, but had to lock them after a spate of pupils shitting in the middle of the floor (I'm not kidding)

I'm not in favour of locking the loos, for the reasons that you give, but I was also vey sympathetic to the needs of the poor cleaners, and the rest of the girls who needed the loos

i asked all the schools we were interested in if I could visit on a non-open day. One said "No" three said "Of course - ring for an appointment" one said "Of course - pop in any time and don't forget to bring you dd" Guess which one I chose!

A big complaint at our nearest high school is that the loos are always locked and children have to ask for a key. Year 7 girls in particular find this acutely embarrassing (particularly if they have to ask a male teacher). Parents are always campaigning about this, but the Head is unshiftable.

Lack of aspiration and inspiration
Everything aimed at lowest common denominator
Very poor communications
Sub teachers
No team sports (only boys' football)
Very little drama / music

DS1 goes back into Yr 9 next week.

His biggest problem in the early days (apart from missing the bus home on day one!!) was the yr 10/11s being horrid to the new yr 7s, mainly at lunchtime. It was not a major problem, and the issue only lasted for a few days, so I'm guessing this is more likely to be the new Yr7s being new rather than the yr 10/11s being overly obnoxious iykwim?

He did have an issue in Yr7 with one teacher (who thankfully retired that year). I put it down to a personality clash, so didn't follow it up, but subsequently found that there were issues with this teacher (this discovered through a conversation with the Head of Year, not through hearsay). I also acknowledge that this was one teacher out of a hoarde of very good staff (ime/o).

My issue with secondary school is that I'm never sure when to follow stuff up, and when to let things lie. I was spoilt at the primary school because the staff are almost always accessible, whereas this is just not possible in secondary school, and you have to wait for the required person to ring you back (which they always do at my DS's school, although sometimes it can take a while, or seems to when you want to sort something out, lol). This is NOT a criticism of secondary school, just an observation.

General communication could be better, but given that my DS is fairly happy at the school, I can live with this.

My 2 youngest are still in secondary school, when they go back they'll be in year 10 & 11. I think their main problems were bullying and also inexperienced teachers.
I think the bullying stems from the fact that the school have no real way of disciplining some of the more uncontrollable children and having sat in on a teacher's class it dawned on me that she had absolutely no consistency and was more interested in being their mate than being their teacher, so in effect had no chance of controlling 25 fourteen year olds with raging hormones.

MB ROFL at briefing....must remember that

So, no, I wouldn't agree.

We show ourselves at our best, but it is still 'Us', however disapointing that may seem to someone from the press.

I've never been told to wear anything special! Other than my name badge, which I tend to wear anyway. The floors are swept, but they are swept every morning. And while we don't go out of our way to ask the most distruptive kids to come into school for open evening, neither do we only ask saints.

I'd say it is a good, and honest, portrayal. And in the end the parents all read the GCSE/A level results in the local paper and read the OFSTEAD results as well.

yes, IME it does.

Open evening does show the school at its best, for example the stuff we do in the science department is stuff that we do with the kids in school.....but we don't do it all in one day IYSWIM

And in reality many schools are now aiming their pitch at year 5 kids and not year 6

Something that happened to me was that I inadvertantly got 'broadcast' to a group of parents who were having an open evening talk. I'd set up an on line revision class for a group of kids, and the ICT guy realised this and put up the session live! I honestly had no idea it was happeneing. Thank God I was less sarcastic with the kids that usual I dare say tha many of them thought it was a set up, but it wasn't.

We also let parents visit the school on a normal day, and they do tend to see us warts and all. And I work in a state comp

From chats I have had with parents of Year 7 kids (I was a year 7 tutor a few years ago) I would say that frequent concerns would be

Bullying
The amount of homework
Stuff getting lost
Kids getting lost
Missing the bus
Not having one single teacher
(in no particular order, except the first which does seem to worry most parents)

I work in a secondary school & my opinion of the most problems would be :
lost kit due to a lack of storage / rushing around a big school / no names on stuff
girlie friends having fall outs
the swap from having one teacher in primary to having lots of them in secondary all with different expectations / teaching styles

(can I be nosey & ask what your research is for )

Are you picking on me mb?....

Obviously not every teacher is 100% consistant 100% of the time, we are after all human , but I'd bet that the vast majority are because if you are not, your life becomes hellish. Just like parenting.

When kids walk towards me they have this funny nervous reaction, their hands fly up to their top buttons . And I quite like that in a funny sort of way, it is a mark of respect, and I respect them for it.

I allow kids to sit where they like at the start of term, and I warn them, that if they misbahave I'll move them. In any class there will be one ot two who will try it on, lets call them Atilla and Ghengis.

A and G choose to sit next to each other at the back of the class, and after a lesson or two the problems begin, lack of concentration, poor levels of work, disturbing other students. You then step in and warn, then you sanction, and because Atilla and Gengis may well not have parents who actually follow up on a threat (they did it once and the boys didn't like it, so they stopped) the poor bahviour continues.

So eventually, because you actually want to teach and not contain mini Barbarians, you make them sit alone, under your nose. The rest of the kids have worked hard, so they get to sit where they like. Immediatly the cry goes up from Atilla and Ghengis, 'You are picking on me , Miss'. Wheras I have simply responded to their behaviour and as a reasonable teacher responded to their particular needs. For the good of them, the rest of the class and to stop my blood pressure reaching danger point.

Atilla and Gengis will scurry home, eger to tell Mum and Dad how horrid I am and how I pick on them, the rest of the class can stil where they like, but these two angels have been singled out, because I am an old Harridan, with nothing better to do. And because Mum and Dad have long given into the path of least resistance, they belieave little A and G.

And that, ladies, is whey I keep a well documented behaviour log

lack of lockers or anywhere for children to store things was a problem at first. my son had his entire pe kit stolen within the first weeks. but they more they get used to only taking what's absolutely necessary after a while.

Our most common problem was the drop in achievement after Y6 until Y9, when SATS come in again and the school starts to make an effort. I have the (probably erroneous) view that secondary schools consider that Y7 and Y8 are less important than the subsequent years. DS (just finished Y11) said to me that he wished the teachers had helped him in the earlier years as much as they did in the GCSE years.

Well, that's what I thought, but DD was always convinced - especially as the only one who did pull her up was the head of Year 7, who never actually taught her.
She used to come to see the Year 6's at our school & would talk to them in the library where I work. When she to the bit about uniform, she'd always give me a grin & say 'but there are always some who will try it on...'

I don't. I jump on anyone that breaks the rules. Kids are great at spotting inconsistancy (as any parent will know from home), so I avoid it at all cost.

We get the kids to review our teaching on a regular basis. this is done 'blind' but I'll bet my boots that the one or two kids who marked me down as 'unfair' were the kids whpo refused to floow school rules.

DD was always convinced it worked the other way round though: she has never been exactly a respecter of uniform rules - rolling up her skirt, make-up & jewellery whenever she could, but she was bright and worked hard in lessons, and almost never got pulled up for uniform violations when others did.
Luckily she is now at 6th form college, where they don't care what colour your hair is or how many piercings you've got.

But,was she imagining things or do teachers go lightly on those who work hard?

In answer to op, my dc biggest gripes with secondary school seem to revolve around the fact that all teachers go heavy on the homework at the same time- they'll have piles of homework for every subject one night, and very little other nights.
Teachers also don't seem to listen to their complaints as much as primary teachers, probably because there is more pressure to get the work done in the 40min class.
As a parent my biggest problem is that a bad teacher (and there are some in every school) will ruin the child's chance of loving a subject, or of continuing on with it in later years.