to be thoroughly sick of the double standards

[teaandakitkat]

My son aged 10 is in a class of 25, 23 averagely well behaved kids, and two nightmare boys. They have both joined the school in the past year because they were permanently excluded from their last school.
I know they have crap, chaotic home lives, I know they are unhappy on the inside, I know all the other kids have way more advantages and are really the lucky ones. But I honestly am so sick of the double standards.

The teaching staff pander to them all the time. They can't control their behaviour. All normal sanctions don't apply to these kids . They have Golden Time free play on a Friday, if you misbehave during the week you lose it. Apart from these boys who never lose anything despite their behaviour. I honestly think the teachers are scared of them and scared of their reactions, they do anything to keep them quiet.

I'm a parent helper in the school and am often in the classroom. One of them called the teacher "a fat shit" and the teacher said "X, we don't speak like that in this classroom. Please don't speak for the next 5 minutes". The kid gave her the finger.
I've seen her send other kids to the head teacher and lose all their golden time for less than that. One of the kids challenged the teacher's blatantly unfair decision and she lost golden time for being cheeky!

There is half an hour on a Thursday where the kids are allowed outdoors if they have all their homework finished, if not they stay indoors and finish it before going out. Apart from these two boys, they have never done homework and are always outdoors.

Now I get that they need extra help, I get that they have no support at home with homework, but the blatant double standards are causing trouble. These kids know they are untouchable and brag about it to the others all the time. The others are getting seriously frustrated and I can see some of their behaviour getting worse as they try out more silly behaviour to see what they can get away with.

Last week my son and his friends were not allowed to take part in a school swimming lesson because of some stupid behaviour earlier in the week. Fair enough, I have no problem with that. But x and y were allowed to swim, despite one of them repeatedly kicking a football at a window until it broke earlier in the week. I was in school, I saw it. The teachers were scared to go up to him and stop him.

The head teacher is the only one who seems able to handle them but she's got an entire school to run, not spend all her time with this pair. If they are put out the class they go and spend the time with the head, helping her with whatever she's doing or sitting on a seat outside her door playing on the school iPad. (Again I've been in school, I've seen this on many many occasions, and heard them bragging to the other kids about the youtube videos they've been watching during class time)

I have mentioned it informally a couple of times but I think it's time for something more. It's not fair. If they need to make exceptions then surely they have to be more subtle. I know 3 other parents went to see the head teacher together but were just fobbed off with a story about 'inclusion' and the school's duty of care to everyone.

I'm not sure what sort of solution I'm looking for though. There are difficult people in all walks of life and that's part of life learning how to deal with them, right?

Would it help if they troublemakers were in different classes? I don't know why they were put in the same class in the first place, my instinct would be to split them up. Or will they not be able to separate them now because it would stigmatise them or something?

There is an extra teaching assistant in their class, not specifically assigned to these boys I don't think, but I'm sure she's there to support the teacher.

But at the end of the day why is it ok for one kid to call a teacher a fat shit in front of the whole class and have no sanction at all, or smash a window and get to sit outside the head's office watching YouTube? That can't be right.

So now I've got all that off my chest I'd be keen to hear if anyone has any practical suggestions for what I can do. I don't want to just go into school with yet another complaint. I feel for the staff, they're in a rubbish situation. But it's really really not fair on the others. Can anything be done?

Going on the anecdotes supplied on this thread, there needs to be more of an emphasis on common standards in the classroom, leastways enforcing an acceptable minimum. That standard should always exclude violence - everyone should be entitled to a safe environment, including the teacher. Surely it should also exclude outright insubordination - for the sake of the entire class the teacher has to be able to maintain control.

While it makes perfect sense to me that a teacher might vary their approach to individual children in the classrom, it shoudln't be to the extent that children think particular individuals are getting a special deal, unless the reasons are public. Justice must be done and must be seen to be done. That gets undermined if the reaction to any concerns about behaviour is a Life-of-Brian roar of "we're all individuals" or a Stalinist "you've no right to know".

I am glad that my ASD DD is in a school where she is expected to do the same homework and adhere to proper standards in the classroom. It means she knows what a minimum acceptable standard of behaviour is, and she, like just about all children, has a strong sense of fairness and wants to know where the boundaries are. It is important to her and her sense of self-esteem that she is held to the same standards as the other children. I wonder how her sense of self-esteem would have been if throughout her school career she had been held to lower standards. She would be behind in her work, and probably mentally written herself off as a possible success already. If she got a tea party for behaving slightly less worse than normally she would have every reason to think (for she is nothing if not logical) that the idea of fairness is a joke.

As for non-SEN children with behaviour problems: there's even less reason to understand why bad behaviour should be tolerated. I don't think schools should be playing social worker, but surely if a child isn't getting taught boundaries at home, the school should be providing an example.

Someone made a comment above about resourcing. Well, the UK is one of the richest countries in the world and its government has an enormous tax take, even on current rates. Its spending on schools is high. Rather than suggesting "there's no resources" I'd suggest they are being misapplied, probably on administration and silly initiatives.

As for the removed post: can we forget about it now? Discussion on it is derailing the thread.

Toad...great post.
Octopus .....I was being rather naughty...I do wonder is the heavy bias towards female teachers in Primary is helpful.

Sorry. You just can't tell these days who's tongue-in-cheek these days.

good mix would be an even number of males/females/trans/non binary

What would that have to do with anything or how would it affect anything that has been talked about?

dunno Rebel....just its maybe not helpful for Primary Ed to be dominated by females

Re: female-heavy teaching staff - I don't think gender has much to do with good behaviour management. I have met some truly appalling male "disciplinarians" in my time, and many fabulous women. No transgenders so far.

Randomer dunno...maybe,maybe not.But that's the majority of people who apply.

no not saying one is better at discipline than the other.....just it might make for a healthier environment.

DD's teachers have all been female, and with one exception they have been all very straightforward and clear. There are no resources to give her extra help (there are no TAs for example) and so we are very grateful that the school has put her in classes with teachers who have been particularly clear and consistent in their expectations.

FWIW my memory of being taught in UK schools 20-30 years back was that the male teachers were much more like this than the female teachers, one of whom I reckon just might have been the inspiration for Dolores Umbridge - I would expect this has changed now though.

not saying there is anything "wrong" with female teachers....just both men and woman have a lot to offer.

In my LA there are around 50 teaching vacancies which have rarely attracted enough interest to warrant interviewing.

As for HTs it's not unknown for there to be no applicants (even with 5K golden hellos).

So we can't afford to be choosy about the gender or anything else about the candidates.

The whole problem is being obfuscated by SEN. Regardless of issues, for schools to function properly there needs to be minimum standards of behaviour. If those aren't happening there should be the following options:
-follow guidance from pupil profiles (supported by parents and experts in the relevant SEN if appropriate)
-follow school behaviour management policy
-provide additional support
-move the child to a more appropriate setting

Currently, option 3 and 4 aren't offered to classroom staff. We are told it is our fault for not planning lessons properly, or not engaging the children properly, or not building relationships properly. But no one will tell me what 'properly' means!

I would like to reiterate that I currently work in a school where none of the children displaying challenging behaviour have a recognised SEN, so my posts are largely about children who are simply disengaged from education and I desperately want to help them.

Amelia,

I found the following articles particularly interesting:

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/4071122.stm

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8009504/Baroness-Mary-Warnock-The-cynical-betrayal-of-my-special-needs-children.html

I recommend that anyone following this thread read them. In brief Warnock says, due to financial constraints, children who should be in special schools are taught in mainstream schools, and in order to obtain more cash, children are being incorrectly labelled as SEN. I can well understand the temptation to do this, but the misdiagnosis hardly helps the child who would be helped more by a lunchtime detention or some other sanction.

It understand toad, but those articles were written a long time ago. And it hasn't helped. I really appreciate people trying to come up with solutions, but the vast majority are things I've considered before, don't work and/or mean me spending yet more wasted time.

For example, lunchtime detention due to low-level disruption (such as talking over me despite warnings):
Child doesn't turn up (10-20 mins waiting, unable to get my own damned lunch)
Issue after school detention for non-attendance at lunchtime (10 mins on computer recording incident and finding child to give paper detention slip; detentions are set for the following Monday)
Issue sanction for non-attendance at after school detention (10 mins as above)

Three weeks have passed, 30+ mins of my time wasted, the child hasn't actually received any sanction and has continued to disrupt a further 6 of my lessons. Note that finding the child to give the detention slip eats in to yet another lunch / break break time unless I want to use my PPA time to disrupt another lesson (and fail to properly prepare for my own lessons) to hand over the slip. Multiply that by 3 students per week.

Then we get to the case where the child is doing this in 2 subjects per day so there isn't enough days in the term to keep them after school. Slt suggest issuing detentions for next term / academic year. (Particularly helpful for year 11 students who are leaving anyway.)

In the case of missing homework the same system is applied, so three weeks have passed, this plus another homework hasn't been handed in and I get hammered in a book scrutiny for not her marking work (despite evidence that I have marked the other 29 books in the class). Plus being told that if my lessons were engaging enough my students would want to behave well and complete homework, despite not doing so for the 9 colleagues who are also attempting to teach her enough to at least pass her GCSEs.

It's ridiculous that you should have to go to those lengths, particularly with such inadequate support.

Reading Ross Greene's The Explosive Child would be helpful for both parents and teachers who have badly behaved chikdren. You can't give up on sanctions for individual children, but have to prioritize the most difficult behaviors.
Mainstreaming and inclusion don't work for children who can't work at or near grade level, or have disruptive behavior.

Amelia - what do you mean by "a recognised SEN"?

My DC has diagnosed dyslexia (which is actually a really poor working memory) but the twat of a father wont agree to the DC being assessed for autism or similar so all of the social and emotional issues they have at school in unstructured time go absolutely unrecognised. Now at a specialist school with all the same issues re-occurring. But that is not "recognised" so nothing is done about it. I am a caring parent who has communicated (politely) with the schools about it until I am blue in the face. But because it is not on a piece of paper from "an expert" it cant be true.

Sorry for you in the circumstances you describe. It sounds clear that you have done your best to follow your school's protocols.