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?

I've always been amazed at how the curriculum can take incredibly interesting topics and make them unbearably boring and uninspiring

I personally think the Department for Education has been so boringly bland, safe and politically correct, corrupted by bad psychology on what inspires kids, and think it should be disbanded.

Op, that graph is terrible. It's a classic example of an extremely misleading use of a false origin, and it has clearly misled many on here to think that "engagement" (whatever that specifically means) goes from very high to vanishingly low, when it actually goes from 8.2 to 5.5.

Hard disagree on this. 8.2 to 5.5 (on a scale of 10) is a significant drop. Just because the origin isn't 0 doesn't make it "false", it's a way of making the trend more visible. I guarantee you could open up the Economist or the FT and see exactly the same thing. Here's one I found after 3 seconds of googling.

I fully agree. Schools absolutely suck all the love and interest and enthusiasm out of learning new things. My son used to be an avid reader until he went to secondary and they started to analyse every word of "classic" books and his enthusiasm and interest nose dived and he stopped reading for fun and it became a real chore for him to read for homework as he just completely lost interest, he's never read for fun since.

I think that can happen with any course of study though. I did a Masters in an area that really interests me and the quality of teaching was excellent. Having to do the amount of reading and research really curbed my enthusiasm for leisure reading because I was just burned out reading for study. It took a good year before I could relax into reading a book for enjoyment despite being an avid reader.

I do think over analysing syntax in a classic can turn something pleasurable into a chore, but the skill of being able to do it is important. I think it’s one of those things we need to grind our way through. I do think it’s difficult for kids when every subject is studied in tiny detail rather than having a more rounded approach those subjects needing a very technical analysis being balanced by subjects where you can step back and enjoy the experience of learning for the sake of it.

That's good to know but I think it's dependent on the school. SEN provision seems to differ massively from school to school.

Maybe the invidulator didn't know the rules. Imo, it's not a good school and I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't bothered to brief their staff properly.

You’re making shit up now.

I don’t blame parents for opting out of a state system that is in crisis. I’ve said the opposite of what you are saying I’ve said to parents who claim that they can just switch back to the state system with no detriment to their kids and save money in the process. I’ve asked repeatedly what on earth they think they are paying for if they are claiming that the funding and resource starved state system is just as good as private.

And I would appreciate it if you stopped posting shit about me on this thread and stopped trying to make it about private schools like you do any time people are discussing the state system.

I think that’s a common story….kids who loved to read and learn, start school and it evaporates.

Wheh I used to look at some of the work my dc had to do, I was bored to tears. It is just so so so so dull. Yet the topics in themselves weren’t.

I feel sorry for teachers on this point, they have a very low level of autonomy in terms of what they can teach and how. It must be boring for them too.

All this ticking of boxes within the curriculum of a topic is just geared up for exams so they can be standardised, which I guess is the only way to have standardised results - the education has to be standardised too. It’s jjust the unintended consequence is a bland, boring, I’d go so far as to say, pointless, learning experience where only the most disciplined can keep the work ethic going.

@Iamnotthe1 16+pages in and multiple comments; it’s the school size, it’s uncomfortable uniforms, it’s material covered, it’s a lack of specialist teachers etc. Most of this is not cultural.
even in areas of apathy/unemployment there’s no reason school can’t be enjoyable.
Although school uniforms could fall into the cultural category.
i don’t think that improvement to make the material covered/environment better curriculum more engaging needs to come at the expense of grades.

i don’t think that improvement to make the material covered/environment better curriculum more engaging needs to come at the expense of grades.

It may though. Schools are obviously trying to press through a huge amount of material for exams.

If we want a more engaging curriculum and teaching teachers need time - to prepare out of class, in class they need time to guide pupils through the materials and activities. Some pupils will manage and engage well but others might need support, have a carry on etc. Teachers need time to set up, undertake and draw learning from the activity. All that time comes at the expense of drilling them in whatever they’ll be examined on.

We need to reconsider what academic achievement and the price we’re prepared to pay for those grades.

@Jellycatspyjamas there are 9-10 other countries that score higher in PISA than the UK, and since the UK scores the lowest in the OECD for engagement that means there’s room to learn and make changes.
No doubt some changes would be $$. Relaxing uniforms costs nothing esp the blazer bs. Same with giving student autonomy to leave school grounds study at home or in the library.

This is a big part of the reason why I now home educate my DC. They lost all their natural love of learning at primary school in the first couple of years. It’s taken years to undo the damage especially with my older two who were in a the system longer.
Happily they now learn what they love and the difference in forced learning and learning something that has genuine meaning to to them is clear to see. I was a primary teacher and I left the profession too as I couldn’t force the learning any more onto my pupils.

I said this in response to a specific comment about other countries managing it and how we could just mimic what they do. Culture and expectations absolutely play a massive role in why we can't as it isn't just education that's different in other countries: it's parenting, working structures, early childhood, etc. too.

A post upthread has just reminded me of some "fun" things we did in form time at school. For a couple of years, our form room was a Physics lab and our form teacher was head of Physics.

Obviously that had down sides and upsides, the down sides being we never had a room we could "hang out" in as the labs were locked when the form teacher wasn't there, so we always had to hang out in the corridor and had nowhere to put our coats, bags, store books, etc., in the same way that other forms could if they had "open" classrooms.

But the "fun" benefit was that if any of the teachers using that lab each day had requested apparatus/equipment set up for their lessons, our form teacher would "play" with it for us during morning registration - not every day obviously, but maybe 2 or 3 days per week. He'd not demonstrate how it "should be" used for the formal lesson, he'd do more entertaining things with it as he had the time to waste with it not being a proper lesson, only 5 minutes or so, but it was sometimes fun, sometimes thought provoking, etc., and it really gave me a better interest in Physics which I eventually took through to A Level (outside school).

I suppose it was a "lite"/safe version of the Brainiac science program (Richard Hammond's).

It really doesn't need to be "big" things or take a lot of time to bring a bit of life and interest into the classroom.

Your response here is the reason why I dislike teh "copy other countries" mantra.
I agree that it should be done but it needs to be done on all levels, including the culture that is behind it.
In those other countries there will be a culture of respecting teachers and education.

I have to wonder why so many schools have three "coasting" years being years 7 to 9 and then cram the broad GCSEs into two years 10 & 11. At my son's school, they formally started the science GCSE courses in year 9 so did them over 3 years not two.

Likewise, the history lessons contained GCSE style content and question styles right from the start of year 7 and through years 8 and 9, i.e. "compare and contrast...", "to what extent....." etc., so by the time they started year 10, the teachers just concentrated on the History material, as they'd already "taught" the question styles, how to use sources, how to avoid bias, etc in earlier years.

Some of the important bits that you missed out

Only the students that want to be at college go there.

If any students mess about, don't hit deadlines, bully, harass, disrupt lessons etc. they are thrown out. (normally after the budget has come in)

Ofsted.

https://educationinspection.blog.gov.uk/2020/01/09/making-curriculum-decisions-in-the-best-interests-of-children/

Same at DDs school. Get them used to the style for GCSE eg Yr 7-9 they have 1 x Scientific Skills lesson per week in addition to standalone chem/bio/physics lessons in order to teach the techniques and equipment they will use at GCSE etc.
Yr 7 they start critical writing, how to scaffold analyse/debate exam Qs etc.
She's just done Yr 8 exams and had to compare/contrast and choose 2 essay options from a choice of 4.

Another thing my son's school did was "language learning" in year 7 which was one lesson per week (half hour) going over some basics of Latin and Greek, roman numerals, prefixes and suffixes, tenses, etc. Greek was mostly the Greek alphabet which is extensively used in Maths, Physics, etc - just getting the kids used to the main letters, alpha, beta, gamma, delta, etc. Latin was used more for suffixes and prefixes, "ia" and "ius" for female/male which leads on to "hyper" and "hypo" for high/low etc., "collos" for something that's big, etc., and of course, tenses etc for all modern foreign languages. From what I can remember, DS found it quite a fun lesson, learning lots of different things, not for the sake of learning them, but all things that crop up in all kinds of other subjects from English to Maths, French to Biology, etc. that help the kids learn those subjects. They seemed to have regular quizzes where they were given things like Latin words and had to guess what they meant, i.e. big/small, male/female, etc or a word or sentence in Greek which they had to translate to English - never marked, but just for fun.

Yes 100% Latin helps with other languages ans subjects. Wish it was an option in every school. Just gives a wider appreciation for common roots of so many other subjects

Because those young people are being forced to meet 21st century problems with a 19th century curriculum. It’s a disgrace that subjects like English literature and RE are prioritised over subjects like personal finance, AI, environmental science, business management, enterprise, etc. I’m not saying English literature and RE shouldn’t be taught, but they should be options not core. At least 65% of our pupils are not ‘academic’ and a significant proportion are muddling along in universities when they should be doing apprenticeships, getting jobs, and setting up businesses.

I absolutely agree and I think the current generation are going to be the most screwed by this dated education system. The world is moving on fast. Eventually I imagine that the education system will have no choice but to evolve but right now, you're correct and the kids now are going to struggle with the disparity between education and the world of work.

Nail on the head. We need to be teaching skills, not knowledge. And skills for the 21st century. It's a disgrace that schools aren't teaching IT as a core subject - even now, it's regarded as something the kids should learn at home and schools do very little re teaching the basics, desktop apps, etc. Some schools still don't do computer science as a GCSE option. IT is so fundamental to everything these days, yet it's still an after thought in so many schools. Some teachers give homework, say an English or History essay to be done on Word, or a presentation on Powerpoint, but no one has taught the kids to use those systems! Teachers just assume "someone" else has taught them! I remember DS being given a Music homework which was to download a specific piece of free music composing software and compose a 2 minute piece of music on it - nothing at all to actually "teach" the software - it took all weekend and lots of Googling! Then they never used it again - a whole wasted weekend!

Some schools still don't do computer science as a GCSE option.

Have you tried hiring a computer science teacher recently??