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.

Until early 90's exams such as GCSE's did not have an absolute pass mark. You were competing against others i.e. certain % in country got A, etc. So it is impossible to compare results since then with results before then.

Also if you actually look at exam papers 10 years apart, yes I think more recent ones are easier.

Back in the day kids didn't take nearly so many subjects. How many bright kids get over 10 GCSEs? How many got that number of O-levels?

Yes kids today take more subjects and I think seem to get more homework. But this doesn't automatically mean the standard is higher.

How many who took o'levels understood their subject better and not just how to pass the test?

We didn't, by any stretch, just learn to pass the O Level any more than pupils do today. It was a full syllabus and you had to know, and understand it, in order to get a good grade at O Level.

When I was at school (in the dark ages) the most O Levels you could take in one year was, I think, nine so not all that different really.

Also juule for things like maths you had to show your working out i.e. how you arrived at the correcta nswer as this showed whether you understood it or not, or had just got lucky with the right answer.

You still do Lesley.

Yes I know - but as I understand now you get points if some of the worlings out are correct, but not the final answer. In the past you only got points for the final answer - the working outs were only to show that you understood it and hadn't got lucky with a correct answer.

Also in the past you couldn't take written texts into English exams for example. I remember having to learn by rote poems and whole chunks of books. This took more time to revise for.

It would help if classroom control was included in the teacher training course. I started a thread when DN was getting sent out of nearly every class he was in and spending all day in the exit room doing nothing. I was exasperated that he wasn't being taught because the teacher couldn't control the class. Very young, inexperienced teachers on the 'teach first' programme had absolutely no resources for dealing with low-level disruption whereas the more experienced teachers could and only sent children out when their behaviour merited it.

We absolutely supported the school and had boundaries and discipline at home, but seeing as we'd only had him a few months it was bound to take a while. Even now I get the odd call from individual teachers to say DN was talking in their class and of course we take him to task over it, but I also want to say, but can't that this is something they should ideally be able to deal with.

Way back when I did my PGCE (15 years ago), we were taught classroom control. I haven't taught for ages, has this changed now?

Haven't got time to read entire thread now (apologies) but just wanted to add my experience: I have just returned to student-life and the average age of people on my course is 18. I am appalled at the level of constant disruption, talking during lectures etc. They seem to have no concept of acceptable classroom behaviour. It both annoys and saddens me that education and teachers seem to command so little respect. Furthermore, I would be appalled if that was my DCs behaving that way - and they are only 7 and 11.

enjolraslove; I wouldn't blame lack of money on any childs behaviour, ( major cop-out ) being economically disadvantaged isn't a green light to mess around in school - but teachers do make allowances ( let her spit on the floor she only sees her dad once a month, let him walk out of class whenever he feels like it he lives on that sink estate - poor thing ) instead of raising expectations, ie; 'you are here to behave and learn whatever your sob story' things might improve - instead, we've dumbed down to their level. I don't know exactly when the rot set in, hard to pin point as my school was crap and that was back in the 70's, (but I'd say Leftie politicians had a lot to do with it )
Hopefully, the Tories will give power back to the teachers.

karma - mamateur is complaining about teachers on 'teach first' - not PGCE graduates. Teach first is a 6 week program. Not surprising in their first year they're not so good at classroom control.

Sorry, my question wasn't very clear. I was kind of asking if they no longer do PGCE (am way out of touch). If they are sending graduates into classrooms without teaching them how to teach, then that is a bloody silly idea and no wonder they can't control the classroom. It can be hard enough even when you are an experienced teacher.

Yes, some schools are hiring 'teach first' graduates, who have a 2:1 degree and have been on a 6 week training course. :)

That's awful. Poor kids and to an extent poor graduates.

This seems indicative of the attitude that any reasonably intelligent person can be a teacher and that you don't really need to learn how to do it - just jump right in and you'll be fine .

A lot of people don't seem to 'get' that teaching is a skill - yes, some people are instinctively better than others, but even they have to learn how to do it. Even a PGCE doesn't totally prepare a person, which is why it takes years of experience to become good at it, especially if you work with children who are challenging.

A school would be shafted if its brightest students were only getting 9 GCSEs. If exams are getting easier (that's a whole other debate) but students are taking more of them, then rather than 'standards slipping' you could just say students are following a broader curriculum.

The curriculum was too large for O levels to take more than about 8/9 maximum. There was a natural ceiling even for the brightest children, same for A levels. I have taught A level subjects recently and I know they are easier, not necessarily in the content, but things like the exam questions are structured and so 1/3 of the marks are very easy to obtain. In the old style essay question, if you were writing on the wrong topic, you got nothing. The exam marking structures are designed to give away marks quite easily which is why the marks have gone up (no, the children haven't got brighter, I know this because I then have to try and teach them aged 19/20 to write essays and critical thinking, two skills they should have mastered at A level at the very least).

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?

No- because you can look the first GCSE maths paper and the one used last year and be absolutely sure that the conceptual level required 20 years ago is much higher than it is now.

When A-level English pupils think that "I could of" is a correct grammatical structure, you know the education system is up the swannee

I'm a parent governor at a 'good' comprehensive (strictly speaking, secondary modern, as we are a grammar school area) so wearing two hats here:

On the one hand, I see a team of staff (SMT, teachers, TAs, SENCO and team etc) who are totally committed to getting the best results they can for each individual child; who DO come down tough on low-level discipline problems and follow through to sanctions up to and including exclusions for worse offences. They are admirable, as people and professionals and I totally respect - and fwiw - like most of them enormously.

On the other hand though, I have 2 'nice' girls, ie they are well-behaved in class, neither is at all academic but they'll do OK, and the things they tell me about low-level disruption at school are horrendous. They both get really annoyed about it, as do I.

I know, from being a governor, that school is doing all they can to crack down on poor behaviour, they support staff in dealing with it, and support the students who are behaving badly (who do of course often have difficult backgrounds/lack of parental support etc etc etc, tho some are just little shits).

Sometimes there are issues the school can handle but sometimes they are hamstrung by rules/regulations - and sometimes they just see the value in the particularly obstreporous kid and want to go all the way for him/her.

It's very hard as a parent to argue with either the school's POV or that of my children - so I suppose I have come to the conclusion that actually some of the low-level disruption is quite educational for the 'good' kids, because it reinforces how not to behave; and that working rather than pissing about is the way forward. I guess if either of my kids were going to be A* students and this behaviour would prevent them achieving top grades I would be more bothered, but they're not and I'm not (am I the only person on here not to have "bright" kids?)

Mamateur- I am speechless.You are blaming your DN's inability to behave on the teacher, because he should have been able to control him???
That is priceless!

Boschy, how sad that governor, responsible for running the school, you dismiss your pupils as little sh*ts

actually spiderpig I am not personally responsible for running the school. and indeed some - a vvvvv small minority - can be described as that while wearing my personal hat. in my governor hat I would describe them as very challenging or with some social problems which preclude them from behaving properly. and I do NOT include those with SN in that category in case you were wondering.

Do you know Boschy, they might just surprise you. I might have been one of the girls you describe and was what some call a 'late developer'. I find it so depressing when teachers have such fixed mindsets, it's possible 'ok' can become really 'quite good' when a teacher believes and encourages. As for not being so bothered because they're not A* students, well I have no words. Sometimes I think our NC and it's tracking system (and the resultant fixed mindsets I seem to see so frequently) have a lot to answer for.

Sorry I've just realised you were talking about your own daughters not pupils (not that this makes it better really). I went to a talk recently that said certain pupils were only capable of a B at GCSE and I thought why not an A* - there isn't an ability ceiling that's set at grade B & if you can get a B there's no reason you should rule out a higher grade as beyond the realms of possibility IMO.