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?

I want super strict schools where rules & behaviour are of extreme importance. Including my child.

My friend is safeguarding lead at a local (supposedly nice school) & it’s absolutely horrendous by the sounds of it. Feral
& horrible kids ruling.

Also the SEND is inadequate and ineffective in many ways. I’m contemplating taking my SEN child out of specialist school because they are not on top of behaviour there either, let alone mainstream. It’s all a bit too much survival of the fittest / and it is not dealing with kids who have higher needs - most of the time I think a big class of 30 is not the right place.

My sixth form did something like this when I was doing A levels about 15 years ago, I think it was a unique quirk as none of my friends at different schools did it. One afternoon a week absolutely everyone had to learn a skill like beauty therapy, bricklaying etc (I can't remember all the options but there were loads to choose from). All subjects were taken seriously and it meant absolutely everyone left with experience or qualifications to start a career that suited their skillset. We all thought it was brilliant!

One child is quite capable of ruining the majority of lessons for their entire class-all day, every day. (Yes, probably the teachers’ fault, but even strong teachers can’t always get the [(non-nd] ‘naughty’ kids to behave.

Even if you contact/get in parents, nothing changes, or the child says it’s because the teacher hates them. Had a very disruptive child tell my boss this yesterday. She does not hate the child, she just wants him to conform, but he hates school. Brutally (if the child isn’t nd and this one isn’t), they should not be allowed to destroy other children’s education so should be kicked out.

I think prioritising 29 children who aren’t deliberately disruptive is far more important than spending so much time on one disruptive child. As a parent, I’d be furious to hear that one student has ruined classes/been class clown/disrupted mine.

This is a massive part of the reason ours are in private.

Discipline, respect, consequences, emphasis on personal responsibility and resilience. The ones who cannot comply after a number of warnings have to leave. And everyone is not a winner at sports day, medals for 1/2/3rd only.

It’s a shame it seems like a privilege you have to pay for.

Schools should of course be able to exclude so that children who want to learn and can learn can do just that... but then we also need well funded PRU's, SEN schools and other environments that can support disruptive etc. children, better support for struggling families and, of course, better access to help for mental health issues and quicker diagnosis of ND etc.

Internal exclusions with kids staring at a wall all day are a disaster, any way you look at it. Visiting a local school on their open evening, the children showing us around pointed out the 'reflection room'. One boy had spent the whole week in there...

The cane/slipper.

I think there should be a very clear distinction between bad character behaviour (bullying, rudeness, disobedience to staff, theft, violence etc) and disappointing performance behaviour (lateness, poor or missing homework, sloppy uniform).

Bad character behaviour should be an unpleasant embarrassing punishment (I agree that cleaning the school is a good one, although I wouldn’t want bullies anywhere near the kitchen), then suspension, then expulsion. Ie if you show unacceptably bad character behaviour three times then your parents need to find you a new school.

Disappointing performance behaviour I’m very relaxed about, but detentions / extra work might be appropriate as long as combined with support to identify the reasons for the issue.

I’ve just been reading private school behaviour policies and one says to the child that if they steal or hurt someone at school they should expect to be expelled for the first offence. I think that’s great.

The current approach of detention detention detention has failed. It does not distinguish between deliberate and accidental behaviour issues, does not succeed in changing behaviour, and frightens the SEN/anxious children.

My child was given a ‘whole class’ detention today where they all lost 10 minutes of their breaktime because one student was five minutes late to class. I have no idea what this was supposed to achieve, but my child has lost all respect for his teacher. He didn’t even notice which child was late, as he was working, so I can’t see how peer pressure is supposed to motivate the late child.

@shreddednips I think we did it as part of general studies classes but yes lots of choice - think I learnt to play the piano as anothe one. I for RSA certificates for both typing and shorthand.

I don't understand why we got rid of polys and technical colleges for 15/16 year olds - a couple of my friends were apprenticed at that age and attending the tech college on day release for building/construction. But then the Gov ruined the apprenticeships with red tape. Nobody has any long term strategy.

It takes money, time and effort. If we had better staffing ratios, I would have had time today to go for a walk with the kid that punched two others then repeatedly bashed his own head off the wall.
The whole incident might have been avoided if I had a teaching assistant in the class with me. They might have got to those kids before it came to that.
We used to have nurture groups every morning where children needing a wee bit extra support went. They got to develop their social skills in a smaller group, the rest of the class got some breathing space and some time to learn.
Nobody learns much when someone is turning over tables, chucking chairs and screaming.
I would have time to build relationships and trust with certain kids who have been let down by adults all their lives.
We used to be able to do all this but now I'm so stretched. I have 27 children, 6 with a barrier to learning such as dyslexia, another 2 with autism, a couple of refugees from different war zones where there is previous trauma as well as English as an additional language, 3 others with English as an additional language, 1 young carer who is always exhausted and just me. I get a pupil support assistant for 2 45 minute slots a week. The rest of the time, I am on my own. Even though I do my best, I am spread far too thinly to do any of my job properly. I cant always keep them all safe, I try but I can't. I can't teach them all adequately. Too many different abilities and interruptions to deal with behaviour issues.
I have a wonderful class full of lovely little individuals but it is a massive job for one person alone. And even as an experienced teacher I am on my knees. But I will try again tomorrow. And the next day.

Oh God bless you. That sounds really tough

To me removing a child as in an exclusion is not for a 'punishment' like you would ground a child because they broke a curfew or send a young child to the naughty step

It is to give the other kids and a teacher a break so learning can continue and a teacher not having to spend the whole period on one student, for example

And it gives a chance fo the parents to take their childs attitude seriously and get them help if they need it

@bibbidiblobidyboo yes that is hard and they are tough choices you shouldn't have to make. Billions to Tata but can't fund education. I despair.

@Kazzyhoward

Many parents are locked in cycles of sen, no diagnoses, no teaching and no way out, having dc with sen that they can't help...

Bringing everyone to the same page in sen from the nursery would help.

@bibbidiblobidyboo obviously incredibly tough. What support to do you get from Senco. How can you support dyslexic students.

@RazzleDazzleEm We have tech for the dyslexic kids and the Nessy spelling programme. I do hornet and toe by toe but I'm going to try and get a parent helper, well granny helper to the toe by toe/hornet schemes.
Only one of the dyslexic kids is deemed having profound problems. I got extra support for them. A lady came two afternoons in September.
Otherwise those kids go out of class twice a week for 30 minutes if that teacher is available. She often gets pulled to support someone in distress.
It is very hard.

This attitude is part of the problem

Bad behaviour is not always a cry for help, sometimes it is, sometimes it is, I referred to this in a previous post earlier, there is aproblem with this blanket belief about this

Secondly, a child with poor MH, or ND issues is still a child, they are still going through developmental stages and part of that is pushing boundaries, a child with SEN can still have bad behaviour outside of their difficulties, rules, boundaries and expectations still need to be in place for those children

Agree, it's about having a balance. Too much discipline and not enough understanding can lead to more negative behaviour, and too much coddling and letting them get away with everything is also not helpful. ND children often have demand avoidance and as a professional who works with these children I can assure you that placing more pressure/expectations on these children does NOT help. They need specialist support, which often mainstream schools can't provide. The teacher feels like it's only on them and it shouldn't be, they have enough to deal with! I agree with a previous comment that a lot of it AGAIN comes back to funding issues.

I think there should be a zero tolerance policy on school rules. All parents should have to sign a contract acknowledging those rules and the consequences of breaking them.

For example

No phones on school premises. Ever. If you need to contact your precious child you call reception. There is literally no reason what so ever for any child to "need" a phone while in school.

Absolutely, without question, zero tolerance for abusive behaviour towards Teachers or staff. The slightest display should be instant, permanent expulsion. Absolutely ZERO tolerance.

Same with disruption in class, instant removal. If your child doesn't want to learn, TOUGH! They don't get to take time away from others who do. That includes all the ADHD, ABCD, XYZ, kids who apparently just can't behave because of a "condition". It's a lovely idea in theory to be all inclusive and tolerant, but that mindset is destroying schools. Teachers attention should be on education, not discipline.

Schools should only teach academic subjects. Religion and politics should be banned from the curriculum. I have a friend in the Republic of Ireland and the sheer propaganda that they are teaching children wouldn't be out of place in a George Orwell novel.

That doesn't work, my school had that in the 70s and older students often attacked teachers.
All it does is teach kids that violence solves your problems.

My DD was bullied at primary, the school did SFA, my DD was the problem, even when attacked with a tennis racket.

We moved schools, the /head there was stern, strict and didn't tolerate bad behaviour, parents called in at the first offence.

Poor leadership is often at the heart of bad pupil behaviour, caused by good teachers leaving, because they can!!!

I mean this is the most fatherless generation those countries you mentioned have societal stigmas around single parenthood. Before everyone jumps on me and says it’s the fathers fault that’s fine and alot of the time could be right but still doesn’t change the fact that’s likely the reason. Having 2 parents is extremely correlated with life success and happiness. There are exceptions but I have never once met someone who didn’t have a father who didn’t have some kind of issue with their mental health this manifests itself in young people as poor behaviour and bullying.

I like this too. Although I would operate a three strikes policy.

Teachers need to have the power to enforce strict behaviour codes.

• A disruptive pupil should receive one warning and then be excluded from the class
• Bullying should result in suspension
• Lack of homework etc results in detention and then suspension

At the moment teachers are under so much pressure and the well behaved kids suffer educationally because it isn't PC to discipline poor behaviour and exclude.

Send them home to what?
Unfortunately the most severely disturbed, abusive, violent children are in dysfunctional ineffective families. Excepting genuinely ND children who need a specific and specialist support, all of the social and emotionally disturbed cases are like that due to attachment issues at home. Either toxins during pregnancy, post natal difficulties in mothers, drugs, domestic violence, prison, additives, weed in air at home, poverty, trauma and all the other etc etc etc's. It's a bleak picture and the support needs to start day dot. At the very least preventative measures for 12 years plus to have a future without early pregnancy and children they can't cope with.

Build more "pupil referral units", or better still, bring back borstals. Give the schools somewhere to send the unruly/disruptive pupils to get them out of the classroom so that the majority of pupils can get a decent education they deserve.