How would you want UK schools to deal with badly-behaved students?

[GeordieDownSouth]

Everyday on Mumsnet, I see posts about children being bullied by other kids, teachers having breakdowns due to poor class behavior, and teachers leaving the profession in droves for better conditions.

As an ex teacher, my main reason for leaving was poor student behavior, and a lack of support from the management in relation to this. For example, a 14 year old girl once pulled my hair roughly when my back was turned. The SLT told me that her behavior was my fault as I should have been disciplining her before she did it!

Prior to being a UK teacher, I taught in China and South Korea, where bad behavior was not the norm. The approach out there is very much the stick over the carrot. If a kid was naughty once, they'd be punished. In Korea, they got no lunch or were made to clean the school toilets. It might sound harsh, but it definitely worked! The kids who confined to behave badly after this would simply be excluded, which everyone supported.

In my opinion, I think UK teachers should be allowed to punish students for poor behavior, such as by making them clean the school. I mean, in an ideal world, teachers would have the time and money for positive reinforcement but at the minute, we don't.

What do others think?

Parents want rules and discipline until it applies to their special child and then they are up in arms threatening Ofsted etc.

I think I’m glad you’re not still a teacher

Care to elaborate on why? Please be specific.

Twisty is correct- all parents want other kids to be punished and the rules to be strict.
Until it's their kids.

I’m with you, OP. Behaviour is cultural to a large degree.

I agree with you. I work in a school (not a teacher) and I'm horrified by the behaviour.
Teachers are not allowed to discipline kids and the kids know it.

There is no discipline, boundaries or respect at home and thst feeds into the classroom.

Parents want rules and discipline until it applies to their special child and then they are up in arms threatening Ofsted etc.

absolutely this!

And some parents don't understand what's wrong with their child's disruptive behaviour, or why they should even bother sending them to school ... the issue is most school behaviour issues are actually home life issues, these kids are already being short changed on tgat front, if you then kick them out of school they are going to have a life on minimum wage, benefits or turn to crime. What I want to see is more joined up thinking with (properly funded) social services and camhs

Children need boundaries so it would be good to enforce some boundaries around respect, violence, swearing & shouting at adults. Another thing that would help would be teachers triggering industrial action and refusing to teach unsafe children. This has had impact in parts of UK however you need to be part of a very proactive union.

I dunno- well I do…

nuance maybe?

my DS was bullied in y8 and attacked by a ‘friend’ and in the end the teachers had to lock him and themselves in a classroom when she had a meltdown - because they couldn’t lock her in the classroom. Awful event. She had to spend a week at a PRU (pupil referral unit) and came back and wasn’t allowed near him…

but.

of course there were a whole shedload of reasons for that that weren’t to do with being ‘bad’ - try living in poverty with an alcoholic mum and drug dealing brother and having autism- doesn’t make anyone able to control their behaviour…

Teachers and us were all very concerned for her as they really couldn’t do anything to help her and were left with no alternative but repeated isolation - which compounds the problem rather than helping.

we’ve had other bullying incidents with DCs and the kids involved generally needed help. In one case I was aware that school tried really really hard to help the kid over a number of years. I wasn’t happy because he was like my DCs nemesis, but I did become aware of how hard they tried with him.

where do all the difficult kids go in Korea when they are excluded - somewhere lovely and helpful? I doubt it…

Litter picking at break times
Physical activity (run round the sports field 20 times)

Isolation does nothing except means the child misses more lessons and therefore disrupts more as they fall behind and get angsty.

Litterpicking is a bit embarassing so it put us off misbehaving when we were at school. You'd have to wear a high vis - it was mortifying.

the issue is most school behaviour issues are actually home life issues, these kids are already being short changed on tgat front, if you then kick them out of school they are going to have a life on minimum wage, benefits or turn to crime.

Yes, but if the parents are not on-board with prioritising education, then there’s little the school can do about it. The kids who misbehave and mess about are likely to have the outcomes you mention whether you exclude them or not, sadly, so you then have to think of all the other kids whose education is being disrupted by them being in school.

So what would be the solution to helping these two children in your mind?

In Korea, I don't know where the excluded children went. I only ever heard of it happening once actually so it was thankfully a rare occurrence.

As others have said it’s joined up thinking. There has just got to be a better way to solve some of these problems than sticking a disturbed child in an isolation room to stare at a wall for the day

In my opinion, I think UK teachers should be allowed to punish students for poor behavior, such as by making them clean the school. I mean, in an ideal world, teachers would have the time and money for positive reinforcement but at the minute, we don't.

Teacher here. I'm intrigued. If students won't do what they're told in lessons, what makes you think that they would clean the school if you told them to as a punishment?

What happened to ND kids in Korea OP?

But lots and lots of children never behave in a significantly disruptive way and still have to suffer the consequences of the bad behaviour of others.

Shamefully, I don't know.

I was there about 15 years ago. At that time, neurodiversity was not discussed in the same way that it is today. I hope that that has changed, of course.

Also, I was the English teacher so I didn't have a home room class. This meant that I wouldn't have been directly involved in that side of the job.

I agree something needs to be done about school discipline - but then I grew up in a country where corporal punishment was the norm. We certainly didn’t have many disruptive kids at school.

I feel sorry for the teachers and the kids who do actually want to learn. In my daughter’s school, kids are constantly being ‘transgressed’ - which involves being sent out of their classroom into another classroom as punishment if they’re being disruptive. So all that means is that two classes are disrupted instead of one. What a bonkers idea.

Agree with litter picking, things like that that help to benefit the school.

You mentioned China and South Korea, which are both very mutualistic societies. Respect for others, boundaries, following rules are traits that are basic parts of the culture and family life, with families often multi-generational (less so these days). There are positives to this (such as behaviour!) but then there are drawbacks too, like people who step outside the norm can become social pariahs quite quickly.

In UK we encourage individualism- IMO too much so, and to our detriment. Take COVID as an example. The whole world locks down, the government imposes all these rules and sanctions to tackle the spread, protect the vulnerable etc… and then can’t even be bothered/care enough to follow those same rules for themselves.

So things like “community service” within schools I think would definitely help behaviour. In Japan students all tidy up the classroom and mop floors etc. at the end of the school day. Not a punishment, just an expectation that you pitch in to benefit the school you belong to. But it’s a cultural shift that is needed that I’m not sure we as a society (UK) are really capable of or even willing to do.

I'm with you OP. I'm also a teacher and we've lost the plot in schools. They have made it extremely difficult to exclude children so children know that they can do what they like. Bring back exclusion and being able to send children home. We should be able to educate without crowd control.

I’ve worked in secondary education for over 20 years and have seen a definite decline in behaviour.
I used to be able to hand a pupil a tea towel and put them on dining room duty if they misbehaved but that fell out of favour when parents complained that it was demeaning. Even though that was a punishment kids didn’t actually mind because there was a certain satisfaction to the job and they got to talk to people while they were doing it. Same with litter picking or cleaning off graffiti, you always felt that the kids were paying back to the school community a little but parents would just refuse their kid to do it because they saw it as beneath them.
After school detentions used to be given out but then parents wouldn’t come and pick their kids up and we’d have to then take them home in the mini bus which is an expense we can no longer afford. So many parents kick off when you try to give their child consequences now. More than I’ve ever know it tbh.

Yes the culture of individualism is something that contributes to this

Everyone is too special, has too many problems to adhere to the general expectations that there for everyone, everyone is too busy thinking about why they cant do something or the rules dont apply to them, adults as well as children. No one cares or bothers to think about how their actions impact on someone else

Conversely there is an overemphasis on group think and being more virtuous than the next person because you care so much, you're so kind and you need to be performative about how open/kind/caring you are in terms of identity politics

A terrible combination

I think secondary schools should be able to have ex army / police officers on site and hand them over to them, to mentor and teach them different skills to help get them back on track and become more responsible. Teachers have enough on their plate without having to deal with unruly students.

CCTV everywhere in schools so that the school can show the parents exactly why their precious little darling is being disciplined, rather than them believing what their sprog told them!

And far better ability for schools to punish and exclude pupils for bad behaviour. That would probably mean a return to borstals and about time too!

Stop being so bloody soft with parents. I.e. a detention means a detention - no option for parents to make a fuss and refuse to allow it - either the parent allows the detention (or other punishment) or they withdraw their kid from the school. Maybe make parents sign a contract to that extent as part of the school application process. Same with uniform code, etc. If they won't "sign the contract", then their precious little sprog doesn't get a place!

A lot of kids are feral in schools because of the parents, not because of the school/teachers. We have to get that message across to the feckless/feral parents and get them to take responsibility rather than the way they've become allowed to abdicate responsibility.