Surely every school isn't like this?

[SchoolIssues25]

I supervised a school disco as a favour at my 7 year old child's school. The school does have issues although has a good ofsted. Ideally I would like to move him but he's happy there.
I was shocked when supervising. I know kids aren't perfect as they're kids but ffs. Kids were pushing, spitting, one lad lay on top of another so he went red and had to be pulled off more or less. The kids were so rough. I was shocked. Surely this isn't normal ?

YES! I agree.

There is a lot of this type of behaviour at my Daughter’s school during playtimes - some from a minority of girls, but it’s mainly boys who are involved.

When I was at Primary School (90’s), if anyone misbehaved they would be given a very stern word by one of the supervising staff and would either be given 1 more chance, or would be escorted to a wall under a shelter and made to turn around and face it and stand there and miss the rest of their playtime. They would also miss their next playtime and have to sit inside if they had done something really bad.

Did the same children end up by the wall often, yes they did, but then when they were here they couldn’t spoil playtimes for the rest of us, as the majority of us were well behaved. Surely this is how it should be? Not like nowadays where the well behaved are forced to suffer as a result of poor behaviour.

I don’t know of any Primary Schools who do the above anymore including my children’s school, but now bad behaviour is so widespread and we’re expected to wonder why! There is no punishment! At my Daughter’s school the same children (a substantial number not the minority as used to be the case when they got punished) go around wrecking havoc and bullying others - bullying one of my children. Most of this behaviour goes unnoticed by the staff as there is too much bad behaviour to deal with because there are no bloody consequences!

The amazing reception teacher at our local primary has been there 25 years - she is an exceptional teacher….. she has said in the last 3 years the behaviour of children arriving in the class each Sept has fallen off a cliff and many parents just don’t care, they seem to think their kids are solely the school’s problem, not theirs as parents.

Yes, you couldn’t tell a child now to go ‘on the wall’ at playtime for misbehaving @PomegranateVasewithout expecting their parents to complain about you. So it’s easier not to.

Exactly.

@GladysHeeler

I can imagine the backlash of many a parent sadly. I can also imagine many of the children wouldn’t be able to keep still either and probably wouldn’t comply.

Not all boys.
Some boys are gentle and quiet (more than you’d think), and hate being tarnished with the whole all boys are boisterous tag. In fact some girls enjoy being more physically seeking than some boys.

Gentle parenting=fake parenting. I agree with this.

From what I've seen, lots of people suppress every normal reaction to their child's behaviour and it completely undermines their confidence in themselves as parents and their authority with their child.

But the other big problem is both parents working full time and not having enough time and energy to do positive stuff with their children such as play or hobbies.

Whoarethoseguys I agree. It was way worse in the 1960s, bad in the 80s and 90s. I feel that a bully will always advocate authoritarian parenting styles. And before someone says they bet my kids were vile, no! They have always had very polite, kind personalities, a lot of spirit, empathy and drive for success. Maybe I was lucky but I believe they benefited from being in a warm loving environment with boundaries but no aggression, learning through example not fear.

Somewhere in another comment on another post, I read 'gentle parenting only works on gentle children'. It's possible that some children need firmer boundaries and lack parental guidance and some 7 year olds lack impulse control and awareness of their own and other people's emotions and feelings and how to deal with them. A little grace is needed - they're still learning about the world but there are limits.

I was at primary school in the 80’s and the cane was still being used. Also slippers, rulers, random board rubbers thrown … with good aim. I remember one kid being hung upside down having his legs slapped by a teacher and another having her mouth washed out with soap and water for swearing. This was in a decent area in Hampshire.

Discos even for my eldests year group now y9 were always lots of boys running about knee sliding etc. I do think kids now dont really do dancing etc.

Boys behaviour in general now is VERY POOR! Ive helped at an activity group a few times so kids age 8-10
Climbing on everything (including sculptures).
Trying to get hand in game machine
Climbing on gate that didnt look like it would take weight. One kid gets off 2 get on..
Cheating at the games. anything

Interrupting so leader cant give instructions multiple times most of the group.
Older kids 10+ throwing mallet in the air to catch,
saying x is the most disliked boy in school in front of x.

At secondary
-
we've had - multiple groups physically trying to intimidate kids out of their space
Saying sexual suggestive things to girls age 12.
Opening girls bags
Deleting their computer work
Etc
often the teachers are around but dont do anything

I was in the secondary sector, still doing a bit of supply latterly. I'm now off the supply list and permanently retired.

Things have been going downhill for years.

In secondary, we were getting teenage boys trying to stand up to female teachers. By that, I mean that they would do the pulling themselves up to their full height routine and then get in the teacher's face. They never did that with tall male teachers - only women and shorter men.

On my last supply stint, I was punched stopping a fight and on the same placement had to throw myself in front of the victim to stop an assault. At one point, I got the violent kid in a bear hug and walked him out the classroom door. I then had to worry about getting into trouble myself, of course. (As it turned out, there were no repercussions.)

Local Authorities and schools are partly to blame, in my view. The last (virtual) inset I participated in seemed to push the view that all bad behaviour was down to trauma response.

It's practically impossible for a child to be given a temporary exclusion in the LA where I worked and there are no permanent exclusions, though a whole-school transfer is possible with parental agreement.

I recall one of my first years (Y8) telling us that a third year boy (Y10) had been advising them that you need to be bad to get treats. (Trips out, access to the Wii in the Behaviour Support Base, etc.)

The Head of Behaviour Support responded: "Oh no! You have to be good to get those treats."

S1/Y8 pupil: "Aye...but ye've got tae be bad first, haven't ye?"

Permissive parents are certainly a huge problem - the kind of parent who complains that their child is being picked on and who will claim that their child's social media was 'hacked' when he sent inappropriate pictures to younger girls.

Before I retired from my PTC (middle management) post, a parent had the temerity to phone and berate me because a young female teacher had picked up on his son's plagiarism. He wouldn't accept that it was plagiarism: "He just used the idea he got from a newspaper article."

He then informed me that he wanted to slap my teacher's face. This was a 'nice, middle-class father' in an office job. (Shouldn't matter, but people do sometimes make assumptions.)

The boy submitted a replacement piece of coursework.

I don't have any recollection of pupils hitting staff during the '60s when I was at primary school.

As a secondary teacher, I do recall being kicked in the '90s, as I broke up a fight (which turned out to involve a knife). In the noughties, I was deliberately punched in the stomach. That was when I first heard of 'restorative practice'. The boy was a victim, apparently, and I'd got in his way. He wanted to apologise for accidentally hitting me, according to a very naive chap from SACRO. (Organisation geared to stop teens from becoming young offenders.)

Eh...nope. I had had a faint positive pregnancy test and (unusually for me) was trying to keep well out of his way.

Footnote. The poor wee victim was later thrown off a hairdressing course at the local college for threatening another student with a pair of scissors.

Things have definitely become progressively worse.

A local farmer (in the next county) agreed to have a marquee erected on his land for the village primary school Leavers' Prom.

He told me he would never agree to it again. "They turned up in limos, dressed up to the nines. We finished up having to turf boys out of the byres where they were tormenting the cows."

7yos are a bit like overgrown puppies, especially the boys.

And they love to play. 7yos don't get nearly enough playtime nowadays, and they're not mature enough to cope with this, so for many it comes out in all this pent-up boisterousness as soon as they're let off the leash a bit.

They're also learning about boundaries, and their bodies, at school, and trying out humour and jokes in a way younger children don't. They get it wrong a lot, and this comes across as being rude, precocious and cheeky. Really they're just learning. Be gentle with them, but let them know when they've crossed a line.

What most 7yos need is lots of love and guidance and physical exercise, plenty of chances to play and run around freely, not to have their toys packed away because they're "too old" for toys and positive but firm guidance as to acceptable behaviour and boundaries.

No one should attempt to police any sort of large party for 7yos unless they have a voice like a foghorn and can successfully channel their inner sergeant-major.

They will run wild if given a chance, because they don't get many chances anymore.

@WearyAuldWumman LAs don’t control exclusions. These are don’t the decisions of heads and governors at any appeal. The stats show you are wrong but you might have a head who doesn’t exclude, but most will. Most exclusions are from secondary schools.

our school isn’t remotely like that

They do in Scotland. I'm aware that the system down south is very different.

A headteacher (or his/her depute) here can make the decision to apply a temporary exclusion, but he/she has to work within the parameters set by the LA and all exclusions are reported to the LA.

Before the exclusion rules in my LA were tightened up, in my role as PTC/middle manager of the department where the offences had taken place, I was involved in a couple of exclusion meetings, though the decision was taken by the depute.

In my LA, there would be no exclusion for same situations nowadays.

Other Scottish LAs possibly have slightly different procedures, but Scottish state secondaries are not run in the same way as those in England and Wales.

That would not be the norm in our small rural primary, they're not perfect and some kids have issues, but generally they're kind. Spitting and any violence would absolutely not be tolerated in homes or by school. I'd be looking to move him if that's standard behaviour (it might not be, discos are exciting). As much as his safety, I wouldn't want my child to assume that is ok. It's not gentle parenting to allow this, and it's not ok behaviour management by school if kids feel they can behave this way there. There was 1 child who had a mix of issues and poor parenting and was accidentally hurting kids in the playground, the yr 2 teacher worked with him every breaktime until he could be trusted in the playground (and now he's fine).

This would have been my 7 year old son (not the spitting)!!. We went to a few of these type things and he would act up. I took a step back and realised it’s because he’s bored, he doesn’t want to be at a disco dancing, he wants to be playing rough. So on school disco nights, my daughter would go because she enjoyed it, and a few of us mums made a plan b for the boys at one of our houses and they had their own treat night…. Without being judged by other parents

Yea, this

@Saltnchilli Do you think it’s acceptable for DS to play rough? I would not have found that acceptable. Or that he gets bored at school entertainment. I do agree he should not go but usually discos are games as well as dancing. Our school had 90 in a year group and only y5 and 6 got to go.

That is absolutely incorrect. What a garbled reading of the data on sexual assault. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Play fighting or not play fighting has nothing to do with learning respect for boundaries and consent.