to be horrified at the behaviour in bohunt school

[SEsofty]

Just watched the programme about Chinese teachers in uk. Whilst I appreciate that it is reality tv and thus exaggeration for effect I was still horrified with the apparent number of children who were talking in class.

I'm not that accident and went to a very normal school but talking whilst teacher did simply didn't happen. I don't agree with the Chinese methods but talking whilst someone is trying to teach you is simply rude.

I think it would be unreasonable to expect that the vast majority in the school do not live in the catchment or in a house or other residence that they can afford in the catchment, whether rented or owned.

I think that my words have been twisted somewhat.
Choosing well behaved children did not mean that the rest were badly behaved - it meant that they could not be trusted without an adult with them . They would have been fine under supervision. I was choosing the ones that would be fine without any. Children of 7/8 years behave like children and many will get away with bad behaviour, if they can. It doesn't change with some as they get older.
Of course employers are looking for good results but they are increasingly finding they need more than that - as you say with your examples mathanxiety. Funnily enough I am watching an interview with an employer at the moment who is saying just that. It is often possible to start at the bottom and then move up as you prove your worth. I know a lot like this.
I can't see where you get the fact that there is no point in school because you can be a high flyer without having done well at school, when I specifically said that education was important and was for life. It makes sense to make the most of it from the start.
Signed agreements would make sure that behaviour was good. Good schools make sure they have good behaviour. Pupils test boundaries - they will cause disruption if they are allowed to get away with it.
Parents do not know how their children are behaving if they are not there. We had that at my DCs school where some would not accept that their children could possibly be disruptive. They filmed the behaviour and they could see for themselves ( one particular teacher)

Of course there is poor behaviour and lack of respect for teachers- you don't have to be on MN long before you find that! It is how schools deal with it that counts.

I didn't like the head at all. I wouldn't like to work there.

I felt so sorry for the Chinese teachers their disappointment and frustration was really sad to see. Kettle boys mum was a nob.

The Chinese lessons reminded me of trainee teachers lessons when new to the classroom; in terms of expectations and positive attitudes. Also the 'reading from a PowerPoint' style of teaching.

Teenagers who cannot be trusted without an adult to supervise are badly behaved teenagers. They should be able to behave well without supervision. Not to expect that is to shortchange them.

Many children of 7 and 8 are also able to behave well without adult supervision, if they have been 'trained' from an early age, i.e. properly brought up. Those who are running wild at at that age have a much higher chance of becoming problem teens. The difference between those who change and those who do not is parental input without that, of course they won't change on their own. They will continue to seek attention any attention will do, but negative attention requires no effort so that is the way they choose to get it for the most part. None of this happens by magic. Every detail of it can be foreseen and avoided.

The lower you start in a job the longer it will take you to advance to the point where you can buy a house or car or support a family or enjoy any decent quality of life. The reality is that most people who start on the lowest rung will not make CEO or anywhere near that. To suggest that starting at the lowest rung is a viable option is crazy in this economy, or any economy, at any time. Rags to riches stories are so unusual that most of them are fairy tales.

'Of course there is poor behaviour and lack of respect for teachers- you don't have to be on MN long before you find that! It is how schools deal with it that counts.'
And it appears the way Bohunt deals with it is to tolerate it and/or blame the quality of teaching. The result of this is GCSEs that are almost as good as second rate private schools and students heading into the workforce with ego problems that have never been addressed.

I can assure you hand on heart that my DCs have never had any behaviour problems in school. I know how they behave and that is how I expect them to behave. Feedback from schools since 1995 has been 100% positive, from teachers who never held back any detail they felt I should know.

That's a fair point. I mean - how much does it cost to buy a house for a first time buyer these days? And the cost of living? And isn't that quite a sizeable deposit you need? At least in the south east anyway.

So if you are young person - starting out on the bottom rung of the ladder - how long is it going to take for you to buy your first home? I think our dc's generation are going to be stuffed unless they have a large inheritance or can jump-start their careers on a decent graduate salary.

Bohunt took 150 students out of catchment Sep 14. I've seen students get on the train at Havant which is miles away

First time buyer deposits and salary required to get there

documents.hants.gov.uk/education/SecondaryData2014.pdf
Total offers of places for 2014 was 397. The published admissions number was 270. Adding the column across gives 397, so it is not clear if the 154 number for 'out of catchment' is offers made or offers accepted.

The fact that there are overall more offers made than accepted indicates many hedge their bets wrt Bohunt. There is only a handful of other schools on this list with a similar imbalance but Bohunt's is the largest. It may well be that Bohunt is perceived to be a 'safety school' as certain universities are known in the US -- a place where students are pretty assured of getting an offer but they will go to a place that is perceived to be better if they get an offer.

Kings school has the largest imbalance between applications and places offered, at 1071, with 358 places offered and 350 published admitted students.

If anyone on this thread hasn't watched Rita - you should! It's subtitled, on Netflix and combats quite a few issues schools have globally (including parent's blaming the school and not imagining their kid could be the disruption or bully) and a funny character who I imagine would be a MN fan if she could be bothered. A sweary chain smoking one .

What's Rita? Is it a drama or like supernanny for teachers?

"The result of this is GCSEs that are almost as good as second rate private schools

You keep saying this. Can you clarify what you mean?

BR, who does all those jobs in the UK and is there any preordained natural order when it comes to filling jobs?

No. But the hype around the Chinese system, which nobody seems to be questioning, is that every single child is emerging from school with stellar results and going on to professional careers. This can obviously not be true- so there must be somewhere where the kids with lower ability go. The ones who can't keep up. What happens to them? And the ones with SEN. What happens to them? Even the Chinese posters on here don't seem to know. One tasteless joke, a suggestion that non professional jobs are done by "older people" or "immigrants". A strong suggestion that all caring roles are done by family, which we know means women - so tough luck all you clever girls zooming through your maths.

And another thing. How does the Chinese system work for subjects that don't lend themselves to rote learning? How about History. I'd love to see a history lesson in Chinese school- but I would put money on us not being allowed to see one. Literature? Philosophy? Art? Or do we not care about any of those things in the new, market driven world we are supposedly preparing our children for?

Crickey, the excuses being lined up on this thread are corkers.

The fault for the appalling behaviour belongs to;

The teachers.
The work.
The length of the day.
The program makers.
The age of the pupils
The ability levels of the pupils.
The social mix of the pupils.
The type of housing the pupils live in.

In short, everything and anything but the pupils.

NarrativeArc Whilst I do not defend many of the excuses being made for them, the pupils are largely, if not wholly, the result of the way they have been brought up and the teaching they have had. It follows that teachers and parents must bear some of the responsibility for the behaviour. Higher expectations from parents and teachers, insisted upon so that they become results not simply hopes, are really what would have produced better behaviour. As I have already said I suspect some element of competition between 2 different schools would have concentrated the minds of the English teachers hosting the Chinese School, and, perhaps, those of some of the children. By the way does anybody share my view that calling children who behave like this "students", when the last thing they are actually doing is any real studying, promotes them beyond their years, wisdom and experience, let alone maturity?

Completely agree cat.

We are raising a generation to take no personal responsibility. A generation who expect to be successful ( not unreasonable considering their country provides them with wealth, safety, a democratic tradition and free education) but who are not willing to do anything tough or dull or painful.

They are being sold a pup, frankly.

I don't subscribe to al those excuses, either. But there is a difference between excuses and explanations. Isn't one of the interesting points of this thread talking about explanations without necessarily excusing?

And i maintain that none of us can say with absolute certainty how our 13 year olds would behave if suddenly they went from their normal school day to 12 hours of note taking in a class of 50.

Employers want people willing to start at the bottom- what they don't want is entitled people with qualifications and no experience expecting to get start at a high level.
At no point did I say 'rags to riches' - I was just talking about gaining experience and quickly becoming an essential part of the work force.
If they can prove their worth they can rise very quickly indeed.

I make a point of asking successful people how they started and lots start this way. I ask young people too and it is no different. Women judges were being interviewed on the radio the other day and that was most interesting and not what I expected.

Children will test the boundaries - that is what they do- particularly teenagers. Are you actually saying that they should be so well behaved that they automatically put up with a weak teacher? I don't think that they should- and I don't think that they do in any school in the country.

My children never had any behaviour problems at school but that is just who they are. My brothers and I were the same and my mother has a letter from primary school, after we all left, saying what a pleasure we had all been to teach - which makes you think that all children hadn't been, even though we had no disruption in lessons.

It is upbringing but also personality and some children are a nightmare outside their parents supervision - across all classes of society and all schools- however strict the parent.

A good question BertrandRussell - what happens to the ones who can't keep up? What are schools like in parts of China that the foreigner never visits? What do they do with SN children? Do they not have any autistic children in China? What do they do with children with criminal records? What happens to the children of drug addicts, prostitutes etc ? Why is just Maths mentioned? Do they have the equivalent of D of E awards? Do they have drama lessons? So many questions!
Not least - who is counted in the statistics? I am sceptical about statistics and what we are comparing. UK is including everyone.

"We are raising a generation to take no personal responsibility. A generation who expect to be successful ( not unreasonable considering their country provides them with wealth, safety, a democratic tradition and free education) but who are not willing to do anything tough or dull or painful."

Do you include your own children in this?

Mehitabel- thank you. It is a good question One which,in suspect, will be ignored.

You only have to go down to Rock in Cornwall to see appalling behaviour from private school pupils who are without adult supervision! I expect that they are fine in school and get great results. It is just a nonsense to say that they are all terrifically well behaved at all times without adults around.

The worst language and attitude that I have ever heard came from 2 teenage boys from a top public school near me. They didn't know I was listening (and probably wouldn't have cared if they did ) - their parents would have been appalled had they heard it.

Isn't there one massive difference? In China kids who don't do well literally don't get a job and may well starve. They have no welfare net to catch them and have a short window to cram in as much knowledge as they can then it is sink or swim. They themselves and their parents are acutely aware of this and will push to make sure they stand out academically at all costs.

We have a vastly fluffier version of this sink or swim, and even though welfare cuts have meant a new generation of underclass in Uk, they at least won't starve. The parents here aren't therefore so inclined to push their kids to study through the night and chastise them into studying all weekend. Our mentality is completely different.

I think that you can ignore the extremes.
China can't want all pupils to succeed to the top. They only need a certain number of top jobs. They need car mechanics, builders, farmers etc
Most of our textiles are made in China now- they must need thousands of machinists - most of our mills have gone from all the old UK mill towns.

I'm not sure you can ignore the extremes as they are what fundamentally drives the students. For example if you look at the health and safety aspects of working in the lower 'careers' they offer you wouldn't want your kid doing those jobs. Yesterday I was listening to a H&S expert for UK who sends work to China. He said in one factory they were working with heavy metal ballasts and they had no harnesses, no safety systems for the workers at all and there was a terrible smell in the air (which clearly he thought he himself did not want to be breathing in as he said he left within 5 minutes). Recent news stories have shown how lax their work conditions are. I know if I was there I'd want my kids to be a doctor, not working on those factory floors.

Why are you posting so aggressively, BR? You asked upthread what happened to the pupils who don't achieve stellar results in China, and I posted my personal experience - my family reality - of my family who aren't stellar academic achievers, in China. That's what you asked for, isn't it? It isn't a "tasteless joke" that non-professional jobs are done by "older people or immigrants" (and I said migrants, people from the villages, not immigrants), it is what I have observed. I never said that I found it funny. Who should do these jobs, in your opinion? Who does these jobs here in the UK? For the vast majority of Chinese, who washes their car or dry cleans their clothes will never be of concern, by the way.

If it had been clear you were only interested in what happened to non-achievers in Shanghai or Beijing, I wouldn't have contributed to the thread.

I was thinking about this last night. My family are lucky. They were about as poor as you can imagine, growing up, but my generation has been socially mobile, partly due to the city which grew up near the village. There are vast swathes of children in poorer rural parts of China who will not have opportunities beyond their village. There are initiatives to help them to achieve their education, e.g. helping them to maintain their schools or providing stationery and materials.

I suggested ignoring the extremes because there are only a relatively small number of top jobs ( hence the competition) and a small number at the bottom when there is no welfare. The millions are somewhere in the middle. That is what interests me.
We can guess that highly achieving parents, with good jobs in big cities, are highly ambitious for their children. I would like to know what chances a farmers child has from some small rural village- what schools do they get? Can they get anywhere if they are highly ambitious for their children?

At least in UK all things are possible. One of the women judges I mentioned earlier came from a long line of Welsh sheep farmers.when she mentioned doing law at her rural comprehensive she was told it was not for her- that was the point she went off to do law- and not at a top university.

Would that be possible for the equivalent girl in China? I doubt they could do it unless from an elite school and university.

Safety in China , or lack of it, shows why we can't compete in textile production. Or are you suggesting that we make jobs in mills so bad that everyone has to knuckle down and achieve in schools?