Teachers getting the blame for everything

[Moonlightdancing]

Is seems to me that parenting is moving more and more towards the teachers. I really wish it was mandatory for each parent to teach a day in a school and see how it's really like. Your child is no angel. My child is no angel. There is so much to teach in a day, to provide support to children that need it, assessments, reports, meetings etc. On top of that you have parents complaining that their child has issues with friendships, school not supportive, needs a plan in place. When to do all that? I tell you when. At lunchtime. So you don't have any breaks. No wonder everyone leaves the profession. Sorry for the rant, but i see all these posts about schools being blamed for not supporting the child....i mean, a little parenting at home will go a long way. Teaching children boundaries and respect would help massively. And it might come as a suprise to some, but children do lie....

I do understand but I think there have always been children who see few people and have mainly been occupied by TV. Neglected children basically. And many more kids who mainly only saw mum or dad every day because fewer kids went to nursery. I don’t know I just feel like covid doesn’t quite explain it. I could understand speech being underdeveloped because of a lack of interaction but not completely absent.

Ignore @Kwer they clearly have an axe to grind

Many many children go to nursery. They generally have a lovely time and end up perfectly well-balanced

Another explanation could be trauma

I have name changed for this but I teach in a school where teaching has failed before. They have used up their opportunities locally.... some three or four... they range from 11 to 14. They are there for a variety of reasons;
Taking a knife to school
Repeated assaults of staff
Just can't sit down
Persistent drug users
Violent.

I could go on....

Many shouldn't be there. Some have ehcp's and there are either no schools available or parents refuse. One would only agree if we moved a named teacher to the new school for his benefit. He has missed around two years of education.

The unique thing about this place is that every child has a parent or guardian who blames the school or staff. It's is never the child's fault. And these are extreme behaviours ...... if I don't hear the word 'cunt' or 'fuck' 100 times a day I would be surprised.

Exclusion (even when assaulting staff) is very rarely used. We strive to keep them all in day. We feed them and try and tame entrenched behaviours.

They come in stoned. They all have vapes. We have to wand them for weapons.

And the really frightening thing. We have had to open a primary and it's full (opened September))

It's starting younger and younger. I had to permanently exclude a six year old last year. He was incredibly violent, tried to throttle staff, threw tables and chairs, kicked, hit and spat at anyone within range. He spent 4 months at a referral unit where he received 1:1 provision in an attempt to " reset" his behaviours, then came back to mainstream whilst waiting for specialist provision. But there was none available, so he remained with us for another six months with the same behaviours. Eventually the ONLY way we could get him into specialist provision ( private but paid for by the local authority as he was " too severe for maintained specialist provision") was by permanently excluding him and literally handing him over to the local authority to deal with. He was just as violent at home, nearly killed the family pet and his poor mother was at breaking point. The behaviours had started when he was less than 3 years old.

Blame the fact that schools are forced to focus on those things, because that is what the government judges them on, not because those things are what teachers actually care about. Schools aren't 'obsessed with Ofsted'. Schools loathe Ofsted, but they can't just choose to ignore what Ofsted want. If schools get poor ratings, they lose students, find it (even) harder to attract decent teachers, and lose funding. Heads have to follow what Ofsted wants. Teachers have to follow the Head's policies. Any teacher could list umpteen things they hate about the system, but we have no power to change it.

@Mamma246 but again children have always experienced trauma (some of them). I can’t be certain but I think it’s something to do with development in the womb and some kind of environmental factor that affects it but maybe we will never know.

I hope so. She was an only child at that point and I thought it would be good for her to mix with other children and be socialised. As well as having basically no screen time which they have more of at home.

I get what you’re saying but some are minor and some are major and prolonged. Add in the tiny individualities of the brain and the complex nature of differing home lives, outcomes for traumatised children will be vastly different.

I loved my teachers.

I even got thrown into a wall by my French teacher because I was being a c*nt. but I never reported him.

Teachers do take a lot of ish. And there are many who care about there kids.

They are kind of heroes, as they r moulding the next gen

❤️

But again that’s always been the case. Children have always been traumatised by varying degrees. When my dad was little kids were regularly beaten by parents and sent to boarding school at young ages 💔 but being totally non verbal seems to have exploded in the last 10 years or so. This is just my own observation and anecdotes from other people. To my mind there has to be a new factor in the mix. I just don’t know what it is so was interested in the opinions of the teachers and early years workers here.

In the report posted below some 40% of parents believed they weren’t wholly responsible for getting their kids toilet trained. Blew my mind.

https://kindredsquared.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Kindred-Squared-School-Readiness-Report.pdf

I feel sorry for teachers tbh, it’s an impossible job when parents expect you to do their job for them.

Agree. Too often there is a terribly tragic situation such as a drowning of a child, and there are mumblings of this should be thought in school.
No, this should be thought at home. Too much is expected in lieu of parenting by the lazy parents who couldn’t be arsed parenting their own children and complain and take no responsibility when things go badly.

Schools are for educating (a very outdated) curriculum. That’s it.

While I definitely feel there is huge pressure on teachers and I’m sure some parents are awful, I feel there is also a bit of a them and us divide going on, particularly in secondary. And a general feeling that parents are a PITA. So consequently I feel awkward asking anything and worried that I’m not going to get a reply because they’re too busy. So how do you keep a positive and engaged relationship with parents? Supportive parents want to understand how best to support their child but also don’t want to be a PITA.

‘I'd massively reduce what teachers have to cover but introduce consequences for schools that let kids leave who can't read and write - that's shocking in this day and age.’

In this ‘day and age’, we have so many children who wouldn’t previously have been in a mainstream classroom.

Let me tell you about my class of ten year olds. I have thirty.

About six are over a year ahead of the curriculum; I need to challenge and stimulate them. We’re doing secondary level work together.

There are a further twenty-one ‘on track’. There are various needs within this cohort; dyslexia, ADHD, SALT, ASD, deafness, learning difficulties and behavioural challenges which mean many of them require additional input and reinforcement; but parents are supportive and we are managing most of these needs reasonably well.

Then I have three who are really, really struggling academically and all have completely different work programmes to the rest of the class and to each other. One has lots of learning difficulties and poor speech. He can count and recognise letters, but cannot read ‘C-A-T’. He has one-to-one support. My classroom is not the right environment for him, but inclusion means he’s got no other options. His mum also has additional needs and cannot read nor advocate for him properly.

One lives in an atrocious home and is neglected. Social work don’t/can’t do much, despite being aware. On the days that he shows up, I’m busy feeding him and nurturing him. He doesn’t want to learn and he’s not really in the right headspace for it, his life is so chaotic. He’s disruptive and lacking in confidence. He’ll do anything to avoid lifting a pencil. I’m doing my best but his literacy and numeracy is very poor.

I have one girl who will go out of her way to avoid even trying or listening. She won’t lift a pencil and will stare at me stubbornly when I try and get her to focus. She wastes whole days in the classroom doing the bare minimum. Mum is pretty anti school and thinks her child shouldn’t have to do anything she doesn’t want to do. She regular has whole weeks off and is given the message that school is a waste of time.

I am trying.

When 500+ parents have practically 24/7 access to individual teachers (who, may I add, are only human and have their own, very human lives) they can very quickly develop into PITAs.

Not the one whose child is moving school and who has asked what we have recently covered. Not the one who is informing me that their child is taking part in a national competition and wants work sent for the days missed. Not the one who lets me know that their child's shoes have broken but they won't have the funds to pay for new ones until pay day.

No, it's all of the following (that I am currently dealing with, via our 24/7 instant messaging service):

• The one who messages me almost daily about attendance marks/ behaviour points for her child, who may be in my form, but over whose marks/ points I have no information and even less control.

• The ones (yes, multiple, every week) who challenge every detention given - it's admin for me to give out edetention and I don't like doing it for that reason, maybe talk to your child about not being disruptive in my lesson.

• The ones who inform me that their child can't do homework - it's almost always a "won't" rather than "can't" as there are multiple ways of accessing and handing in.

• The ones who don't read messages or newsletters properly and ask stuff that's alredy been sent directly to them.

• The unhinged one who just wants to complain.

So, if you want a positive and engaged relationship, please:

• appreciate that the very vast majority of teachers want the best for your child and for the class as a whole

• appreciate that teachers are time-poor

• stop challenging every sanction your child ever gets

• use Google/ newsletters/ the internet to find out information and the right person to contact

• TALK to your child before contacting us.

I do wonder whether there is an increase in non verbal children because of the time when parents had to work from home while looking after their children at the same time. Given the number of threads on here from people who work from home and are asking if they actually need childcare for them, I think there must be some parents still trying to do this.

How do some teachers actually stomach parents?! There is a lovely teacher at my DCs’ school and there is one parent that is absolute a**hole who never gives her a break. The rest of the class’s parents love her but this one mum keeps trying to hassle her all the time. ‘My son isn’t getting the support he needs, he needs support’ never able to actually say what the support is, and clearly has the attitude that the school should be doing everything as she refuses to even read with her DS at home. And the whole time, this teacher is professional and sweet and tries to bend over backwards for her. I don’t know how you all cope!

That's why I do supply now. It's completely different to how it was thirty years ago when I started to teach.
We had funding for all sorts of enrichment programs and activities.
Parents were supportive and volunteered to help out at (at Secondary school).
Nine years ago I quit and started supply teaching because I wanted to concentrate on our now ten year old DD.
There are so many problems within education at the moment but when I'm being threatened with rape and hit with chairs I have to agree that parents need to be held accountable.
I don't go back to the schools where the behaviour is so extreme , obviously.
You'd be surprised at the number of affluent parents who try to access the 'previously loved' school uniforms as well.
I love teaching. I just think society needs to recognise there needs to be a paradigm shift in how education is viewed , funded , and appreciated.

We had parents evening a few weeks ago and the head teacher said Thank you to me and dh for being so supportive to the school. Tbh I thought we were nightmare parents as I always need to be reminded about ordering school dinners and sending back school trip forms. We don't even go to the school fete because ds is autistic and can't cope with it. If we are supportive then I dread to think what the unsupportive parents are like.

You sound like you have a good relationship with the school, which is supportive. I can’t stand parents who treat teachers like they’re not human beings - my DCs are friends with teachers’ kids and, for the most part, they are just normal people who want to do a good job and they care so much about our children. You always get people who don’t perform in every job, but I think teachers work bloody hard and they don’t deserve being spoken to like they don’t have feelings. Parent WhatsApps are vicious too. I don’t blame all the teachers for striking or leaving the profession when they have to put up with nasty behaviour from people who should be setting a better example for their own kids.

I do agree with you. These are the kids being silently pushed past parent on phone, child sometimes with a screen in front of them too.

Others do actually talk to their kids and have great conversations.

I forgot another thing that's dying out: board games.

I have an increasing number of children in Y7 still unable to read the eyes on a dice. Children who don't know what Ludo is, have never played Monopoly, don't know basic card games like UNO or dice games like Yahtzee, let alone rules of movement in chess or checkers.

Now that's really concerning, because it tells me just how little they get played with at home.

Edited to add: I am a single parent. I work full-time and do all of the life admin for all of us, too. We're all exhausted. My kids still get played with and taken to the library regularly. Lack of time and tiredness doesn't get much sympathy from me; most parents are tired and time-poor and still a number of us manage to parent our kids.

Ah I just noticed I posted on the wrong thread for this bit.

Schools are not places of learning, they are rigid and authoritarian. Children and teachers are both leaving and I don't blame them. A class of 30 with one teacher is unreasonable and little education will happen. Teachers don't have the freedom to teach and want to leave. No surprise that children won't want to be there either.

Many parents are now choosing Home schooling as an almost mainstream option and providers of home ed have exploded in most areas.

SEND children are excluded and being damaged because they cant fit the rigid structure.

Its about money but also a culture of mistrust and control which is why so many are turning their back on the system.

I would love to see primary schools with almost complete freedom to operate a learning and flexible environment class sizes of max 20 with two staff in each class this will include SEND children more and reduce the need for years long waits for EHCP's from the LA. Trust teachers, parents and children to create a learning environment and get on with education.