If you are a teacher or parent…

[Flopsicle]

What is one thing you would improve about your school if you could - needs to be realistic (or at least semi-realistic). It can’t be “wish I had a bigger bladder” for example! What is one thing that works really well in your school and is it primary or secondary?

For me, homework - I don’t think this works well in primary (I’m not including reading, spellings, times tables in this).

Friendship benches where children can sit if they’re feeling lonely and someone will join them, older children can volunteer to organise games.

I'd like schools to go back to being focused on learning and not focused on crowd control and absolute compliance. Schools are getting bigger and bigger while the curriculum is incredibly narrow and nothing is valued if it isn't examinable. It sets up a significant minority of kids to fail and to hate learning. It also doesn't set up kids well for later life - when they really need to be questioning and challenging the absolute rubbish we see in the media. I have two kids who are barely surviving in secondary, and it is a very different world to when I was teaching 15 years ago.

I work in a school.

I wish we had access to speech and language (SALT) as I feel a lot of behaviour is a child struggling to communicate and understand and some direction from a specialist in that could help me support those children. At the moment it's trial and error and guesswork.

I'm also a parent. Communication from schools is not consistent - this would be beneficial as parents would know where to look and when if there was a bulletin board on the school website that could be checked.

This one is a bit controversial - for parents to parent their child. This means supporting their child if they do something wrong and being responsible in helping the child learn from it rather than get defensive and look to place blame elsewhere. Work with the school - they really (IME!) want the best for your child - them to be happy and receive an education. I don't enjoy telling parents if their child has hit another, or has refused to do their work, but I do have a duty to keep you informed of your child's behaviour in school. Especially if it points to possible SEN and you as the parent need to set the ball rolling for diagnosis (which I can't do in my LA).

In my class I need more adults.
i have more SEN children than I can cope with single handed, who all have different needs.
Every day is a battle.
I am exhausted and feel very sorry for the children who are not getting enough of my time and attention.

I would also really like the curriculum to be overhauled. It’s too full and we are constantly chasing our tails and having to move on.

I would also like enough planning time within my working week.

To get rid of the recently introduced Sparx Reader for yrs 7 to 9. DS showed me how it works, and I can honestly say that if The Dementors had made a reading app, they would have made Sparx.

To have enough adults to support the classroom teaching, rather than TA’s used as human shields for the violent children who can’t be in the classroom. Funding is diverted from the children who need it and so all children suffer. Sadly increasingly common.

Agree with much of these!

Re: water/squash, a bit of discretion maybe? Spillage is harder though obviously.

The mobile phone policy. Supposed to be no phones yet some teachers encourage them for research in lessons. What happened to a library? I’d rather there be a total ban than a confusing ‘you can use them when I say so’ attitude

Parent of 3 in secondary school here.

A TA in every class (primary and secondary)

My dc school used to do a thing where tutor groups were mixed years but the same house, so the tutor groups would be G1, G2, G3, G4, G5 and G6. Then J1, J2 etc. My eldest loved it and it meant he got to know some of the older students as well as the year 7's. The older ones would look out for "their" year 7's and make sure they weren't upset or lost etc.

Swings, slide, climbing frame, zipline etc in the playground in primary and secondary schools.

Money
money
money to provide more support for children
more support staff
more pay for support staff

I may have indirectly given a clue to my role

Parents being on board and supporting school. The amount of times I've called home for poor behaviour and had no support is ridiculous. Most recently a child called another student a homophonic slur and kicked him. Parent reply 'ah well it's just kids being kids.' It happens more often than you think. Even just a simple 'child x hasn't don't their homework this week' to be told, yeah we don't make them do homework she doesn't want to do it. Losing battle if parents aren't on board.

Get rid of year 6 SATS. DC2 loves learning but hates that year 6 is just testing SATS knowledge, they do a SATS paper or something very similar several times a week and it’s only October. Today they did a 45 minute grammar test that I am sure mostly tested grammar rules they will never need to know after the summer. She loves reading but says she hates it, what she hates is the reading comprehension questions they do every week for homework and once a week as a test in class.
For AuDHD DC1, something, anything, that would have meant she could have managed secondary school, as home education was absolutely not what I wanted but there was no choice in the end. SEND support/ EHCPs to not be almost impossible to obtain.

What system did they use before that worked well?

What do they use now?

I would like blazers to be banned so parents don't have to choose between buying a blazer or buying a coat for their child. Most students round here wearing blazers don't also wear a coat when it's cold or wet. Schools where there is no blazer seem to have more students that wear coats.

On a similar theme, I would like 'smart office wear' for sixth-formers to be got rid of. I don't see dressing teenagers up as 1980s office workers as a valuable exercise or as something that leads to better results. Locally, the sixth-forms with the best results have no such requirements.

I’d ban water bottles in primary schools. Sacrilegious, I know, but they’re a total pain. Banning them would solve the squash or water problem at a stroke. Too many primary schools tell the kids a load of unscientific bullshit about how much water they need to drink so creating generations who think they’ll faint or become unwell if they’re not glugging water all day. In primary classes, major spillages from bottles are a regular occurrence and dealing with the resulting puddle is an unwelcome distraction. Smart kids have learned to add the ‘I need a drink of water’ plea to their suite of work-avoidance strategies. Nobody had water bottles when I started teaching, my memory is that it started in the early 2000s when that piece of educational snake oil called Brain Gym was somehow adopted across the primary sector. A prominent feature of Brain Gym was its unsubstantiated claim that children needed to drink stupid amounts of water or they’ll be dehydrated and won’t be able to learn. Nearly all of Brain Gym’s ridiculous claims have long been disregarded but the incessant hydration one is firmly embedded in the primary school system.

And then that feeds the incessant demands for the toilet...

As a parent, I'd favour more relaxed uniforms with more options (sensory, autistic child...)
I taught in a non-uniform school at one point and it was so refreshing to not have to waste time and attention on scruitinising what teenagers were wearing. There was no novelty value and they defaulted to leggings/ trackies, t-shirts and hoodies for comfort.

Play-based learning and free flow right through KS1.

Also, abolish 100% attendance awards-whether individual or class-based.

To follow the law on send.

What an interesting thread!

My key one is parents working with the school. A bit like what @anonymoususer9876 said in their last paragraph. Another poster said something similar
But more than that, it would be great if messages from parents and messages from school were similar.
And MUCH MORE important, if schools weren't expected to do actual parenting. Like, its not OUR job if your kid hates brushing their teeth or wants to be on Snapchat aged 8. No, that's a parenting role, please stop trying to make this our responsibility or bringing it to us, or trying to make it our problem.

More TAs, obvs

More funding and more specialist places for severe SEN. That one breaks my heart.

@FranksInvisibleLlama I can assure you that in the two primaries I work in, LOADS of learning goes on in yr 6 aside from SATS.

It would be helpful if parents read the comms schools send out.... newsletter, messages, etc.

The blazers are a complete waste of polyester. Too warm in summer but neither warm enough or waterproof for winter.
The kids stuff them full of phones, keys, wallets, pens etc they weigh a ton and hang like a sack of spuds because they are full off all the above.

When did 'play time' become 'snack time' maybe schools need to refocus that one and id agree with the primary school water thing.

I love the mixed year form group idea. I’ve not heard of that.

Attendance awards are so odd. Parents and schools should work together on barriers to attendance. Also I’m not convinced that a child’s health deteriorating due to being in school (be that because of mental health issues resulting from or exacerbated by the school environment) should be overlooked to tick an attendance box - I’d favour a more balanced approach. I think attendance is prioritised over value of being in school - e.g. when children are unwell - just leads to more teachers and students becoming unwell, reducing overall value at best and some horrific outcomes at worse (increasing rates of long covid for example). It should be acceptable to say that it’s unfair for lots in the class to suffer by insisting ill pupils come in, in the same way as it’s acceptable to say disruptive behaviour impacts the class.

The headteacher at my school strikes a good balance between uniform and comfort - she says children don’t learn as well if they’re uncomfortable.

A friend’s child goes to a school where GCSEs are started in year 9. That seemed a good idea to me. They spend three years working on their chosen options. I don’t know how common this is.

Thats now frowned upon as it means the curriculum narrows too early.

My DDs school did the opposite... in yr9 they got a term of some of the subjects that weren't in the KS3 curriculum so they could try them like architecture, business, animal care etc to see if they did want to do them at GCSE.

Talking of which... schools having the funding to offer vocational alongside academic subjects in KS4. Not everyone is destined to study law at Oxford, let's have education for everyone.

Uniforms... if need them, let's have them reflect daily life .. joggrrs/leggings and tshirts in KS1, maybe KS2. Shirts and ties banned completely in Primary.
Secondary... something like smart trousers and polo (nor white, they just look grubby), with a sweatshirt.

1. The return of class TAs (which includes funding for fair pay and decent training for TAs).

2. No more Ofsted, return to a more supportive local authority inspection system.

3. No more SATs.

4. More freedom for teachers to manage their classroom in a way that works for them and their pupils. I would love more flexibility in my timetable - where I am at the moment I’m not even allowed to read a story to my class outside of the ten minute slot that’s timetabled.

Ofsted hate this, narrows the curriculum too early.

I'd like to see more vocational options in ks4 and beyond.

More funding for proper researched and impactful SEND support. Not stuff like coloured paper which is a load of effort for minimal return. Proper reading and maths intervention from trained staff, not more of the same. If phonics hasn't worked for 7 years, try something different.

I love DD’s school but:

• much more relaxed uniform. I wouldn’t be at my best in a tie, polyester shirt and blazer, so I don’t hold out much hope with a lot of 7 year olds.
• better lunches.
• get rid of SATs and therefore the months of teaching to the test that precedes them.
• more money to make teachers’ lives easier - whether that goes to TAs, resources, prep time or whatever else is needed.