To think that schools need to get much tougher on low level disruption & it's no wonder we're apparently falling behind other countries in terms of educational attainment.

[Cortina]

After reading the Ofsted report for a local primary I have been thinking that parents and teachers should get much tougher and expect higher standards of behaviour from children. It's no wonder we're apparently falling behind in terms of educational attainment when so many excuses are seemingly made for poor behaviour and low level disruption. At the risk of sounding ancient the sort of letter received by pupils below would be unthinkable 20 years ago.

Excerpts from Ofsted 'letter to pupils':

Sometimes we saw that the work teachers set was either too hard or too easy or a bit boring and then unsurprisingly some of you lost interest and started to misbehave. We think you behave well most of the time, especially in interesting and enjoyable lessons. Sometimes, when the lessons are a bit dull and not so exciting, some of you get restless and begin to disturb others.

The letter goes on to make excuses for low level disruption and some occasional bad behaviour and say that this isn't the children's fault at all. It ends with a request that they smile through and that the officers have noticed it's a good, safe school so they're lucky.

If I read this as an 11 year old child I would assume:

1. I could blame the rather dull lessons & poor lesson planning/teaching for my disruptive behaviour.

2. Wonder why on earth rather dull lessons were on the agenda at all? If the adults think lessons are sometimes boring and a bit pointless then I may as well switch off.

3. To think there were no sanctions or consequences for poor behaviour.

I think we need to wake up. Our children are going to have to compete in an increasingly globalised world. Can you imagine this being written and circulated to children in South Korea, Singapore or China? How the teachers would laugh at us circulating letters like this to pupils.

And I hate to bring up the private/state thing but how many prep schools do you think would have this philosophy? Surely we set our children up for failure with these sort of platitudes and half-baked excuses for poor behaviour.

My wider experience tells me that these sort of attitudes are not isolated to one (good by the way) Primary. I can see that they are trying to 'get the children on side' but I don't think it's working for reasons stated above.

^ agree - pupils who are continually disruptive should be sent to special schools - it's really not fair on teachers or the poor kids who want to learn.

What I would have liked the SN child to do would be to go to a school that can handle his difficulties and keep my child safe. The NT kids who have assaulted him should have been sent to a stricter school where they keep them in line.

I think the expectations upon teachers to make everything entertaining is utterly ridiculous.

Also, we need to start appreciating the difference betweeen what is interesting and what is entertaining. Dificult tasks, even the dry ones, can be interesting because of the concentration needed.

It should not be encumbent upon teachers to turn every class into an episode of Glee.

I went to a highly selective very disciplined old fashioned school a very long time ago (before the cane was abolished) , and guess what? Whenever we found lessons tedious, repetitive, unchallenging or had a teacher who didn't have the 'edge' in terms of authroity and ability to get us to knuckle down and behave, we generated a low level of disruption. And sometimes even a medium or high level of disruption.

In many schools now standards of discipline are very stringent, far more so than in the liberal 70s and 80s. But parents jib against this, as can be seen by numerous threads on MN. Or rather they jib against it for THEIR child ('what's wrong with long hair, a tattoo, my child's family heirloom earring, taking a mobile on a trip, wearing kickers with a tag on them when unifrom specifies 'no', being kept in for talking when everyone else was talking too, blah blah blah') but want everyone else's children kept under a thumb, told off, kept in, excluded etc etc.

And I don't see academic standards fallin - they are rising compared to a decade ago.

"pupils who are continually disruptive should be sent to special schools "

Really? So a child who has never been shown how to sit quietly, how to concentrate, how to respect authority should be deemed to have special educational needs?

I appreciate that effectively this is what happens in the fee-paying sector- disrupters are required to leave if behaviour does not settle down, but what is a child in the state system to do? How are they to learn the required norms if they are shunted off to a (non-existent round here) special school?

Special school education is far more costly per head than ordinary primary education- where is the funding for this to come from?

I'm not sure what the answer is really. We already introduced classes to prepare children for schooling- they're called nursery classes, and it seems the majority of children pass through them, yet many are still not ready for school.

Indieskies- have you actually been into many schools recently? I'm not sure which schools you think have stringent standards of discipline, compared with schools 30 years ago.

I have been into secondary schools in my authority where as just a 'member of the public' entering the building I felt unsafe.

Yes, I run projects in schools (primary and secondary), and teach on them.

If a child is excluded then that is better for the vast majority of their classmates as their learning is not disrupted.
As far as the excluded kid is concerned are they really losing out? who knows. What are they getting in school anyway? Apart from lots and lots of attention as it needs more than one member of staff to deal with them.
Are they really punished? er no-what punishment can school impose. That only leads to them kicking off again, screaming swearing, threatening to kill/harm/ do whatever to the unfortunate staff member or do the same to another child.
I have seen primary kids totally out of control. They disrupt a whole lesson. The other kids learn nothing except how far the disruptive kid can spit and several choice words.

Captainnancy- Do you seriuosly think that schools don't teach children how to behave?
Increasingly teachers spend more and more of their time doing what in years past would have been considered a parents job. This unfortunately includs teaching them right from wrong.
There are many programmes with various names that help to show children how to behave, how to explore and control their feeling etc etc. Lots of outside help such as cams which sadly quite often parents choose not to attend.
Yes they all want school to help their child, but sadly seem unwilling to put in the effort themselves.

Captainnancy; I'm not talking about a 5 yr old who fidgets a bit during show and tell - I'm talking about a 13 year old who pushes desks over & tells his teacher to fuck off. These 'pupils' should be expelled immediately for the safety and well-being of all concerned, teachers are not bloody prison officers and social workers - they are paid to teach. & as for the abusive violent kids who are expelled, quite frankly I couldn't give a toss what happens to them -

rycooler - this thread is about 'low level disruption' - not kids who push desks over. That's not low level disruption.

You don't care about the kids who are expelled - until they rob your house, threaten you with a knife, make your high street a no go area, create a riot.

Then you care about them very much.

Or maybe your child or your grandchild will have SN. But it won't get diagnosed because most kids don't. Then they're the one being disruptive. You're the one pulling your hair out. Then you'll care very, very much what happens to them.

And in the above few posts we see why its so hard....if you look at what a more traditional education system entails:

• insists on classroom discipline, and insists parents make it happen too.
• streams the kids and ensures lessons are relevant to ability
• removes disruptive kids from the school
• typically removes "difficult" kids from the mainstream classrooms too

Just doing those 4 things would massively increase the efficiency and effectiveness of educating the majority of kids. Doing any of those 4 things as part of the system is politically virtually impossible in the UK, and has been for a generation, as the cost of dealing with the exceptions in any useful way is huge, and no-one likes the results at the rough parity of cost/pupil as the majority.

Also, in most countries teaching is typically a homogenous syllabus to a largely homogenous assumed population group - whether the actual population is homogenous or not.

Thus people solve the problem by voting with their feet to live in areas/try for schools where other parents are more likely to not have "problem" kids.

I'm not talking about children with SN - that's different. hey guess what? some children are disruptive just because they can get away with it, no SN. but let's blame the teachers, Maggie Thatcher or Donald Duck - it's always someone elses fault so take your pick.

How do you know you aren't talking about kids with SN?

You can't know. Because so many kids with SN don't get a diagnosis.

But sure, there are some kids who are disruptive and don't have SN. But for the most part you can't tell whether or not a kid does have SN.

And even if you do know a kid has SN, and is disruptive. What will you do with them? You'll allow them to stay in school and be disruptive? Or will you exile them to a special school?

As long as it's not your kid you don't care at all.

Part of the problem is that a large proportion of educationalists are ideologically opposed to streaming, not to mention any kind of discipline that seems 'authoritarian'. As a result, those who can afford it have voted with their feet, creating bonkers house price bubbles and middle-class ghettos in areas with good schools.

And kids who are unfortunate enough to be born in a poor area with bad schools, but sensitive and intelligent with a desire to learn, are left completely at the mercy of a system which believes it's better to have opportunities that are uniformly shitty than risk damaging some violent little psycho's self-esteem by practising any kind of selection. Which is bollocks, because the whole of adult life is going to practise selection against the violent little psycho; but by then it's too late for the rest of them to catch up with the luckier kids who didn't have to share a classroom with him.

Why anyone thinks this represents fairness, rather than a gross injustice, is beyond me.

^ like it.

This kind of education policy teaches children that they don't need to pay attention to anything that hasn't been predigested to fit in with their as yet unexpanded horizons, that they never need to put any graft in and that if something is boring or hard work then it's entirely reasonable to abandon it. Then, when we are confronted with the self-centred, idle, ignorant adults this produces we sneer at their narrow horizons and condemn their reluctance to take or persist with the crappy types of job available to the self-centred, idle and ignorant.

Exactly, couldn't have put it better myself :)

rycooler - you do understand we are talking about children here? the vast majority (not all I agree but the vast majority) of the children who display seriously bad behaviour 'the abusive violent kids' you spoke of, have hardly had what you would call a fair shot at life so far. Very, very often they come from disadvantaged (not necessarily economically) homes. How on earth is just removing them and saying you don't care what happens to them fair? we are all part of a larger community, not just a community of 'nice' children

We are part of a larger community and as part of that community it is time that the majority started to see the benefits of boundaries being set for the minority. I really don't understand why two/three in a class should rain on the parade of 27/28 and be allowed to do so by teachers who regularly complain they aren't respected. No, I don't respect peopel who contributed to the destruction of my daughter's education for two years at a sought after state school. No, I don't respect people who would rather make excuses for miscreants who will not behave because they take their politics to work with them. No, I don't respect teachers who refuse to take action because every child at their school is entitled to an education when it is at the expense of the majority.

captain nancy do you not think that the parents of some of the children who will not behave might wake up to setting some boundaries and introducing some functional examples if they had to face the consequences of their child being excluded from a good school and that no, actually their child is entitled to nothing unless they keep their side of a bargain.

After 8 half terms of misery and excuses I am ever thankful that we have enough money to have been able to remove our daughter from what used to be an excellent state school and transfer her to a middle of the road independent school. She was further behind in September than we had realised (although in the top 10% at the high performing state school) and has to work incredibly hard to catch up with the girls who left primary school as top average and not London High School material. The reason - continual low level disruption, excuses and a laziness that says "ooh let's not bother, it's just too hard to have high standards and to insist on them - I've got a chip on my shoulder so why should any child from a good home succeed".

married- I'd suggest not tbh- if they cared about their children's behaviour they would have instilled some discipline themselves at home perhaps?

Exactly agree Nancy. Married in white- it is not about punishing their parents for having badly behaved kids, which is how your post comes across. The majority of serious discipline issues have parents who either dont care or cannot cope effectively. Their kids being excluded is a punishment solely on the kid, it will not affect the parent. Yes the majority should not be disadvantaged by the few kids with issues but equally in the same way that the nhs spends a disproportionate amount on those unfortunate enough to have serious illnesses or disabilities (as it should obviously), the education system should spend more (time, money) on those who are disadvantaged by virtue of their background. Of course a good school should be able to do that without disadvantaging others. Equally, as I said before, these are kids. I have known many who aged 12/13 were really, really difficult but given the right support are now good, productive members of the school community.

And I don't see academic standards fallin - they are rising compared to a decade ago.

No- they just made the exams piss easy to make it look that way

Yes the majority should not be disadvantaged by the few kids with issues but equally in the same way that the nhs spends a disproportionate amount on those unfortunate enough to have serious illnesses or disabilities (as it should obviously), the education system should spend more (time, money) on those who are disadvantaged by virtue of their background. Of course a good school should be able to do that without disadvantaging others

Problem with this is that its an expensive way of doing things, and money is becoming tight at the same time as pressure on standards is going up.

Bride-I heard an interesting comparison the other day. Athletes break records all the time. We don't assume the hundred metres is getting shorter-but that bit by bit athletes push themselves harder in different ways shaving time off the record. Now, radical suggestion here, but is it possible that teachers are little by little learning more about teaching and learning, enabling them to help their students achieve better?

100 metres is an absolute, while exam marks are criterion/norm referenced and change from year to year.

However, teachers do get more adept at spotting the markers for attainment and teaching accordingly.

When private tutors do this, and loads of privately educated kids have this ( what the fuck are their parents paying for in the first instance?) this is fine.

When the proles achieve ace results it's dumbing down.

Go figure.