Why do you think behaviour in schools is so much worse than even 10 yrs ago.

[soul2000]

This is not a joke thread. I am generally interested as to how much the standard of behaviour has deteriated in the last 25 years since i left school.

What amazes me, is that teachers are not shocked when watching programes like educating yorkshire, that just shows how bad the behaviour of some pupils is.

Another shocking thing is that pupils who in my time would have been labeled a menace "ME INCLUDED" are now seen as upstanding pupils.

How has the standard fallen so far and what can be done to re address the balance.

This thread is in support of teachers.

Lack of parenting

Parents wanting to be friends rather than setting boundaries, over indulgence and too many "little miracles"

Lack of respect for educators - taking child's word against adult professionals, blaming the school rather than the child. Not working together with school

Lack of childhood freedoms leading to lack of independence and maturity stunting

Government policy after government policy changing and changing education - focus on engaging and entertaining rather than education

Targeting 50% to university education despite not being suited

Mainstreaming students with severe special needs

BINGO

I think there has always been a mixture of behaviours in schools. I remember some particularly difficult students when I was at school.
I like to think my dc go to a good school and Ofsted gave the children outstanding for their behaviour at their recent inspection.
I think it's down to good schools , good teaching haven't seen anything to say standards have fallen in the last ten years.

And Educating Yorkshire is in a notoriously deprived area (behaviour in these schools has always been poor) and is not typical of most schools.

Waterloo Rd did an episode where some children stole the ethanol from Chemistry, drank it and ended up in hospital. The next day it happened in the real world.
I was more shocked that ethanol wasn't kept in a secure chemical store.

I agree with the points above about parents undermining the schools authority.

I also think that the changes and strains on family life - especially work/life balance haven't helped, an unintended consequence of feminism perhaps?

curlew

People have been saying this sort of thing for centuries. 'The yoof of today' is an age-old phenomenon!

Standards the same in our school and I've worked there for 11 years.

Kids do get away with far more than I used to but that was nearly 40 years ago.

Yep I agree with parents undermining teachers. And the fact that teachers get far less support from slt because they now spend all their days holed up in the office working on SEFs, school plan, New curriculum, data analysis, SIP and the rest of the ridiculousness.

In my school you would never send a child to the head teacher no matter what the behaviour (although I know this is not the case in every school - he is just too busy to deal with the minutae of badly behaved kids). Years ago teachers had that threat, along with the threat of a big fat bollicking from your parents, now there are far less consequences for bad behaviour

In my very humble opinion there are several reasons.

• Some parents allow too much bad behaviour when children are toddlers and it's 'cute.' I know someone who encouraged her 2 year old to say swear words necause it was 'funny.' It's not so funny now he's 7 and constantly in trouble at school for swearing. If bad behaviour is allowed when they are little it's much harder to start saying no as they get older.

• Some parents have very low expectations of their children's behavior. I helped at a 6 year old's party onceand a small group of children wouldn't watch the entertainer and ran about shrieking. I heard one of their mums say 'Aww, they're only little, they can't be expected to sit still.' All of the children had been to school for a year and a half by then and would have had to sit still for many assemblies that were much longer.

• Teachers are no longer respected as they were. It used to be that if you were told off at school you'd be told off much worse at home. Now a lot of parents make excuses for the behaviour, and won't accept the children have done something wrong.

• Some children aren't prepared for school life. My cousin's son never had to sit down to eat. Instead he was allowed to wander about with food in his hand. Consequently he was in trouble in his first week of school for crawling under the tables at dinner time.

There are more, but that will do for now!

Interesting I believe Socrates complained that behavioural standards were slipping

I've been teaching almost thirty years in primary, and behaviour has always varied greatly depending on which school and area you are talking about.
In my first few years there were numerous boys who thought that they'd be headhunted by Man U and girls who were sure to be pop stars and neither group saw the point in learning much.
Same with disruptive behaviour, there were many disaffected and downright rude children back in the day too.
It's why my behaviour management is good, I like teaching and I don't like continuously having to police 30 children, so I try to make the teaching and learning as engaging as possible. Just like I did in1984 .

Englishteacher - yes, just been googling:

Socrates said:
Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble
their food, and tyrannize their teachers.

And even earlier:

"We live in a decaying age. Our youth spend their time in taverns and are
disrespectful to their elders."
-Anonymous graffiti, circa 1800 B.C, found in an internal
passageway of a pyramid.

I am furrin so shouldn't contribute... but the behaviour in my schools 30-40 yrs ago was atrocious. I have never understood anyone who wanted to become a teacher. Was always run-a-mile for me.

It seems like behaviour in DC schools is far far superior to what I experienced.

I gave up teaching this year as I couldn't stand it anymore. There is nothing I could actually do to prevent a child misbehaving and detentions/isolation etc do NOT work. Couple that with a parent who comes in all guns blazing when a detention is issued to their child........and a headmaster who overruled any punishment. You then have a school heading for disaster.

A child who repeatedly misbehaves SHOULD be excluded from any school trips etc. If anyone disagrees with me then please feel free to accompany said child on a trip and 'manage' them while they smash museum displays and run riot.

My ex-colleague's and myself would have been very relieved to see six very, very troublesome pupils excluded permanently. I mean it. I got to the point that I did not care about their future after having chairs thrown at me as well as the daily abuse.

Yes OP behaviour has got worse over the last ten years.

Parent power and Student Voice.

Awful.

I don't think behaviour has changed that much. Reporting of behaviour in papers & on reality/documentary shows has changed though.
My brother was in an appallingly behaved year and he and half the boys in his year nearly weren't allowed to take their final exams due to it. He's 30.
My year at school had some shocking instances of behaviour, (funnily enough one of the worst behaved kids in my tutor group is now a police officer!) loads of kids in my class had no respect for teachers or school, thats if they bothered to turn up.

Parents need to support teachers, unless there is a clear case of bullying going on. It doesn't do children any favours if they hear their parent arguing the toss with their teacher. Any querying should be done out of earshot of the child, ideally in a pre-arranged meeting situation where the teacher can calmly explain exactly what has been going on.

Some kids are great; some aren't. Same with schools, teachers and parents.
I've found behaviour has improved over the 10 years I've been teaching - but that's probably due to me improving at preventing bad behaviour and dealing with it if it happens.
Handwriting on the other hand....

Twenty years ago, almost all parents tended to go along with the teachers' decisions regarding discipline. If an adult outside the family had to reprimand a child, the child's parents would usually assume that the adult was in the right, feel embarrassed that the child had misbehaved, and give the child the message that his or her behaviour was unacceptable.

I do not think that parents automatically believe an adult over a child now. This has had a positive impact in certain situations (e.g. disclosure of abuse) but a less positive impact in others. If a child is reprimanded by a teacher now, the parent is quite likely to phone / email / visit the school to complain that their child has been treated unfairly (often because they've only heard the child's version of events). This gives the child the message that any behaviour is acceptable so long as they can persuade their parents that they were in the right.

I think behaviour has improved, education has improved, NHS has improved. Sometimes I think I live in La La land as I don't recognise any of the places depicted on TV, are they a wild exageration.

My DC are 26, 24 and 12 the schools they went to have improved every year.

ThreeBee

You hit the nail on the head there. I have dealt with children who go running home to tell their parents of being victimised/bullied or treated unfairly when I have seen with my own eyes them punching another pupil in an unprovoked attack.

I have dealt with many parents that quite frankly need to get a grip and realise that their child is no saint and needs discipline and sharpish.

ThreeBee this is a classic

My DH handed out 5 sanctions last week to different pupils who had forgotten equipment and/or messed around in practical work as we are supposed to do under the 'rules'. 3 collective sanctions means a detention after school (in our day one sanction would be a detention!). All 5 sanctions were cancelled after parents/kids/learning support managers got involved.

What is the bloody point?

Threebees... I remember my parents (both teachers) discussing how nowadays parents wouldn't support the teachers in the way they used to.

Thing is, that 'nowadays' must have been about 40 years ago.

What Curlew said on P1 - and you can throw in Tom Browns schooldays and Tom Swyer or if you want to bring it up to the 1960s, there's Please Sir, and so on and so on and so on.

I was at a teacher training conference about 15 yrs ago, when they had a speaker, to talk about discipline and behaviour. He said he wanted to start by reading from a school log book / behaviour incidents record. It was quite a list of incidents..... then, the punchline of course was that it was from a log book from 70 years ago.

Every generation has it's pupils with challenging behaviour - the difference now is that you know a lot more about it. When you were at school, you just thought all schools were like yours and knew no different. Now, they have TV reality shows and "media coverage" of anything that will cause a stir.

Ok then, what happened to parenting in the last 20 years that made parents behave worse? Or not just worse, more protective? I'm a lecturer and we get parents accompanying 18yo to open days at university and emailing about coursework on behalf of their DC . What happened to make parents behave like this?