Why do our kids hate secondary school?

[noblegiraffe]

Together with the news from PISA that our teens are the unhappiest in Europe, new research shows that engagement and enjoyment of school falls off a cliff once kids leave primary and start secondary.

https://schoolsweek.co.uk/revealed-the-school-pupils-who-disengage-during-year-7-dip/

https://www.thedeveloperlive.co.uk/opinion/opinion/why-do-uk-teens-have-among-the-lowest-life-satisfaction-in-the-oecd

"It found that while engagement declines through school “in almost every country”, the magnitude “is more pronounced in England”, suggesting disengagement is not just a symptom of age “but something atypical” that is happening in England.

There has been lots and lots of discussion about the impact that social media is having on teen mental health - what about the impact of having to go to secondary schools that they clearly don't like?

@PeatandDieselfan I think the older might, the younger is a very babied 12 year old, incredibly different to my own youngest.

I guess this may depend on the family. But I think the independence thing in my experience is more city versus town than different countries. London kids anyway feel quite independent compared to similar kids from other countries. Mine were walking to school by themselves in year 5 which is 9/10.

We don’t live in a city (we live in a very small town) and most of the kids walk to school and back with friends from year 5.

Yes we definitely need better apprenticeships here.

Good to know. I just remember learning about their school system and thinking crikey you’re almost written off at preteen age and sent to the other types of school and not even allowed to attempt to do anything better! So sounds like it isn’t quite as bad as that then.

The problem with an actual mobile phone ban is how do you enforce it.

You can remove the phone if its seen in use but that's it really..

You would have to search every pupil on entry. It would take ages to get them to empty thier bags completely and to pat them down. Do you really want teachers having to check bras and pants for phones.

Even handing them in or using a pouch has limitations as many kids have two phones.

My daughter loved primary school and thrived. When she arrived at secondary she made good friends and still gets good grades but the detentions for everything are just ridiculous! In my day (I’m 47) you got a detention for getting into a fight or telling a teacher to F off. Now they get detentions for forgetting a pen ( are we not human ? everyone forgets things ) and for going to the toilet in lesson !! Ridiculous common sense needs to come back.

Easy to blame phones but hardly anyone had them when I was in year 7 and it was still rubbish.

We came here to live when the girls were 12 and 14.

These were what they found to be different in the negative:

Back home youngest DD was still in intermediate, so middle school. It was one hell of a shock to be tipped into a school with kids up to 17 years old! The very youngest at the school are so, so tiny next to the oldest.

The size of the school, and the noise level of the classes.

The lack of resources. The school's library was abysmal, and then closed. The laptops were out of the ark.

How other kids already felt funneled out of hope and progress by the education system. Having a select grammar nearby, and being a comprehensive academy, a lot of the kids seemed to feel that they were already failures, not having got into the grammar, and there was no point in pushing themselves academically.

The curriculum was so crowded with so many subjects, and so much pressure exams wise, particularly in GCSE years.

Most probably at least partially as a result of this, there was no room for 'whimsy', for experiences that encourage enjoyment of learning.

An absolutely bloody ridiculous focus on attendance as a metric, whereby if kids were sick as hell, they were still expected to attend school.

Ditto, this moronic authoritarianism about uniforms - if you're hot, you can't take off your blazer without permission.. REALLY?!

The loss of good, qualified teachers, trained in their subjects, passionate about teaching - not blaming the teachers, could totally see why they were going!

The casual misogyny in schools.

Oh, and no real time in which to get lunch, and even if you were able to go to toilet, you really didn't want to as they were so disgusting, and excellent venues for bullying.

Yes the lunch queues are ridiculous and sometimes my daughter doesn’t get chance to get any due to the queue! Also the toilet queue is ridiculous at break with everyone want it to go hence people need to go in lessons.

you’re almost written off at preteen age and sent to the other types of school and not even allowed to attempt to do anything better! So sounds like it isn’t quite as bad as that then.
I believe it's actually a lot more flexible than the UK system when a child has to take exams at 16 and you can't change that. A child can go to the lower level school, decide actually he wants to go to uni and do an extra year to convert, or do a conversion year after an apprenticeship, or do an extended apprenticeship. It gives a child who isn't quite as mature as others time to develop and go to a school which suits them.

@Jellycatspyjamas that's my Yr7. No exams any time soon! My Yr 8 DC will leave school after Yr 9 not having sat any formal exams.

Shouldn't parents make an effort? Why does it all have to be on teachers? If there is ban in school then surely parents should be adhering to that ban? Of course a few students would try to sneak in a phone but I would hope that parents would be aware and make an effort to stop them. When did parents stop parenting?

It's a lot worse now. I was bullied at school but didn't have a phone in the 90s and got to go home and get a break from it. Now it just surrounds children all the time. Someone I knows son had a messages sent to him every 5 minutes saying 'kill yourself' over and over for hours and I've heard that kill yourself is now just a common thing kids say to each other.

As a former secondary school teacher I saw so many awful things happening on phones, children do not need them. They are really easy to learn how to use so why not wait until they are a bit older, let them learn social cues through face to face interactions and enjoy their lives before getting sucked into the murky world of social media.

that's my Yr7. No exams any time soon! My Yr 8 DC will leave school after Yr 9 not having sat any formal exams.

Thats a crazy amount for a 13/14 year old to try and retain - a little bit of everything but not much of anything. How can they learn which subjects they’re interested in if they have 13 to try and absorb at small bite sized pieces. Can teachers do anything constructive in 45 minute bites especially when the first and last 5 minutes are written off getting the kids into and out of class?

Well I'm sure many parents would make an effort, but realistically parents are buying the phones for children not the school. Parents like being able to contact thier children, or track them. increasingly tickets for public transport, the school bus or other payments like lunch are via apps on the children's phone. So even if we take a phone off a child (our rule is a parent has to collect it from the office) we discover the child literally cant travel home as that bus operator only has online ticketing.

And the biggest issue with phones is parents let thier children go on them until late at night. We survey the children at our school (which has a resrticted phone thing) and they spend up to 8 hours a day on thier phone outside of school - many til 2am.

So if we ban phones in school, we have to be realistic that it will involve staff time, searching and storage facilities for those that need them.

Now it just surrounds children all the time. Someone I knows son had a messages sent to him every 5 minutes saying 'kill yourself' over and over for hours
But what has that got to do with school?

Going against the grain here...

My son hated primary school. 7 years of hell because the school refused to accommodate his academic abilities.

He is thriving at his state secondary school because he's met people like him, he can play sport competively, there is a genuine community spirit, respectful relationships between teachers and pupils, the staff know him and he can learn. Small boys grammar school of 90 intake per year, divided into lower, middle and upper school. Strict rules, supportive atmosphere where bullying is stamped on. High parental involvement - personal and financial.

My son loves this school however it's success is dependant on so many elements Crucially, they model themselves on the private school model but are funded by the state.

It's not for everyone but it suits the academics who want to learn. The equivalent girls school leaves a lot to be desired.

It’ll certainly impact kids going into school, the emotional distress of constant bullying, then going in to face people who are telling them to kill themselves is horrendous. I’m not saying the school can do anything about kids texting at midnight, but surely it must impact kids wanting to be in school and being able to learn.

IMO schools are too big. I know it's economically unviable (and where would we get the teaching staff?) but lots of much smaller schools that are more local to pupils might help. Schools with no more than 500 pupils, smaller classes, where everyone knows everyone?

Yes, yes, I know it's a pipe dream, of course it is.

@Jellycatspyjamas Thats a crazy amount for a 13/14 year old to try and retain - a little bit of everything but not much of anything. How can they learn which subjects they’re interested in if they have 13 to try and absorb at small bite sized pieces.

I'm not quite sure I understand your point. If they do fewer subjects, how can they learn which subjects they're interested in? What would you suggest the school cut out?

Home schooling will become the norm.
My youngest son dropped out of secondary school age 13, he self taught, totally independently. No online school or tutors, all the information is free online.
I continued working as normal, it made zero difference to my everyday life.
He passed all his GCSEs and A Levels, now thriving at Uni and also working remote part time for an American company in software engineering.
It can be done.

As a home schooler who gets lots of negative attitude from wider society, this thread just leaves me baffled.

I don’t think it’s about cutting things out but thinking about how we give kids opportunity to meaningfully try different subjects.

My DS is about to start high school (in Scotland). There are 8 broad curriculum areas made up of a range of subjects that will be covered in his first two years, but not all at once. So for example he might do geography for one year and history for the other, then chose which he wants to chose for his exam years, or do woodwork for one term, metal work for one term, then tech drawing for another.

That feels more constructive than expecting 12 year olds to keep up with and absorb learning in a huge range of subjects all at once.

Definitely there would have been consequences at home for getting a detention as it was a serious thing. Son got a detention every day of secondary by and large for minor things. I’d check whether it was for something worth talking to him about but if not I didn’t mention it tbh. Just accepted that he’d be late home. He was unbothered by them largely because it was like a youth club with numbers there overseen by duty manager who had given up long before so they were no deterrent and didn’t alter what he was getting them for.

Because secondary schools in the UK are absolutely grim.

I went to a bad secondary school (20 years ago now) where behaviour in classes was awful. Frequently no teaching happened in a lesson because the teacher was trying to manage behaviour; constant noise; constant stress; lots of bullying; narrow corridors crammed with people between lessons; supposed to be outside during breaks (to avoid the corridor chaos) even in winter.

As a bright person I apparently did well for myself - went to a fancy uni, have a graduate professional career etc - but the experience of trying to go unnoticed in that school environment for 5 years (y7-11) has honestly affected my entire life.

From everything I've seen of state schools today, they are generally significantly worse than that: worse behavior, more exam pressure, worse facilities, more strict about petty things (uniform violations, toilet use). Try and spend years in that environment and is it any surprise teens hate it?

You can block numbers on your phone.
You can take phones away at night and let the parents look at it before the child does
The parents can, and some have to, counteract this poison. You have to build resilience in a child.

We did with our eldest way before we thought he was old enough to have to deal with bullying. It was heartbreaking but we never gave up on him, we lifted him day after day after day. He bullies didn't break him because we wouldn't let them. And this was in years 5/6 more than secondary. But we made sure he knew that we could sort anything out if it came via his phone.

Parents need a close and honest relationship with their children to get through secondary sometimes. And there is nothing sometimes the school can do, they can inform the bully's parents, but if those parents take no action outside of school, what exactly can you do?

Schools aren't responsible for outside school phone use, access to platforms that have age limits but parents ignore that.

I know many parents think they are, that schools should be responsible for getting children INTO school.

How are children going to grow into resourceful adults if their parents are floppy and expect school, the local authority, the NHS or whoever they think should, sort out everything to do with their child?

Parents are the key to so much here.