Aibu to think most people have no idea what it's like being a secondary teacher.

[Tiredteacherlass]

I believe that most people have no idea how bad behaviour is and how most schools have feral children and no real means of control.

I'm fed up. the shouting, the filthy language, the name calling, the drugs, the absolute lack of slt support.

Ohflip

I was at primary in the 80s and remember the cane over the head teachers door in junior school. Would have been 1986 ish. I remember older kids saying they had been hit with a slipper but it was definitely not used by the time we got there.

My Mum's teacher knocked a child out with a board duster. Can you imagine the daily mail if that happened now

I've been teaching secondary for 9 years. I taught in a state secondary for 6 years before an overseas move took me into the private international sector.

Behaviour in the very average state school was nothing like you describe. There were some difficult children but the majority were respectful and wanted to do well. I was not routinely abused and most parents were supportive. I think there are still good state secondary schools out there which are largely civilised.

My first degree was in social work and one of my industry placements was in a school. I came out of there swearing that hell would freeze over and I would live on the streets before I would become a teacher. From what I experienced teachers get fucked over from all directions - students, parents, administrators.

Teachers have my upmost respect and when those rare stories of them losing it come up on the news I feel nothing but empathy because I've seen the hell they live through everyday. And this was many years ago, I can only imagine how much worse technology and social media have made it.

Oh @WhokilledO2 I recall seeing it, but it was a reminder and a threat. Never once used in my time.

My Mum's teacher knocked a child out with a board duster.

Shows how much has changed, now the opposite is much more of a likely situation.

• Although it must be said not with a board duster, maybe an interactive whiteboard pen.

I'm a parent not a teacher and as a rule I do my very best to supoort schools even when I disagree with things and I have high expectations when it comes to my children's behaviour .

Dd1 started secondary school this yr. And I confess to being appalled at the behaviour frankly she's been pushed shoved nearly ended up falling down the stairs twice due to general fucking about and there seems to he an awful lot of disruption.

Now to me ( probably an uninformed irrelevant opinion but hey ho) it needs to start in primary school. Expectations of behaviour need to be raised. Now by the time you lot get them they are 11. There is no reason on this planet unless there are severe additional needs and frankly the stats don't add up here. The percentage of SN vs the amount of kids being dick heads does not match so predominantly it's not the children with Sn causing the issues . Many are the victims if the dick heads as well tbh.

It shouldn't be that hard to sit down shut up do your work and walk sensibly from.class to class. Now I don't blame the teachers here I blame the parents.

They should be in school ready to work and learn. We are too soft on primary schools. We think a red card or sitting them beedbto someone will solve the issue. It won't. And the state of behaviour at secondary proves that. Behaviour that can only be dealt with by seating arrangements means that when thats not possible due to setting or option choices or sex segregation in pe, netball falls apart .

There is something seriously wrong with the system if walking a few metres to the class from causes such chaos

It starts witg parents being held accountable. Teachers should be teaching not parenting

I know a retired teacher who, in tgeir early days in the 70's as a young idealistic NQT asked the school bruiser why he misbehaved when he had the cane more than once. He thought it hadn't worked. Kids response?

"Ooh no sir, I didn't do loads of stuff in case I got whacked"

Make of that what you will. I'm not a proponent of whacking kids, but there's so little deterrent for poor behaviour these days.

Parents back up their kids without question, before ascertaining facts and blame teachers.

Victimhood is another firm of entitlement. Even if one has had a crap time or has SEN, support needs to be there but sone of the kids themselves have a victim mentality. Their inability to take responsibility for abd do what they CAN do makes all the difference. It's an attitude thing. Dyslexia doesn't mean failure in anything by less you have a failure mindset.

The further I get through teaching, the more I realize mindset is they key. Determination. Resilience. Taking responsibility for actions, work and words. It's the difference between the kids I see at 25 who you meet in the street being successful in life and not. Academic ability isn't as important as mindset.

That's what kids need. And it mostly comes from home and early life.

I get it. Taught for ten years and it all just ground me down. When redundancy came up after mat leave most of my dept were clamouring for it. Thankfully I got to wave bye bye to it. People always ask if I'll go back and I hope I never have to. It's sad because I loved teaching. Everything to do with teaching nowadays just makes the job so much harder. My mental health certainly couldn't have taken much more

This is such depressing reading. I have a friend who recently had a post-DC career-change at the age of 45 and has gone into teaching. She lasted 2 terms in a state comp. Not an inner city one either, it was about as rural as you can get. When I met up with her I was shocked - she’s literally a shadow of her former self.

I would also say that my DC have always been privately educated (Central London) and I can honestly say that the situation is very different in independent schools. They just don’t need to put up with abusive behaviour. If you swore once at a teacher you would be expelled - simple as that. Disruption to lessons simply isn’t tolerated. These schools have waiting lists so if a pupil doesn’t want to learn, it’s “next” and they all know it. There is a clear no tolerance drugs policy and not keeping up with homework is not an option. You will be expelled and that’s it. It’s shocking what a different world it is. I do also know some great London state school that don’t have discipline problems either. I don’t think it’s an inevitable “sign if the times,” but I do think the discipline problems start at home and this is a tough issue to tackle.

If you swore once at a teacher you would be expelled - simple as that.

Even in an independent school I can't see that being a reality. It takes much more than that to consider an expulsion, swearing might be rude but it's not a reason to expel a pupil.

@whokilledo2 I never said anyone was snowflakes and you’re actually agreeing with me. At base level children are not more fragile but they are being failed. Those SEN children used to have support, used to have special schools or tailored curriculums. There is no support in schools now. The wonderful inclusion policy means that SEN child isn’t in a support base and doesn’t have a 1-1 but instead is in a mainstream class with 29 others and no support at all other than a frazzled teacher who has unrealistic targets. Also in that class will be 2,3,4 perhaps more children with emotional and behavioural difficulties, also with no support who will be laughing at the SEN child telling them they are thick and the teacher will be powerless to stop it. A detention the parents support them in not attending? A days suspension aka a skive? A chat with SLT? None of this is effective.
Those who do have parents who never say no? They are the ones bullying they quiet, hard working, struggling child and the school staff can’t stop it and the LA won’t let them.

According to the Times' special supplement last weekend, the educational performance of state schools has improved greatly over the last year or two, so hopefully the picture is not as black as this thread would suggest.

I fear some teachers entered the profession for the free bursary rather than a genuine wish to teach, so may not have been of sufficient calibre to start with. I would prefer that the bursary monies were spent rewarding those who actually stick with it for a few years, rather than being squandered on people who think I may as well give it a go for the free money, but drop out soon afterwards.

Apologies in saying this to those teachers who do a fantastic job, and who have my total respect.

I work with Reception age children and have noticed that every year they seem to have less respect for teachers and adults in general.

Yep, I'm hearing you. Work in a special measures school, had a door opened onto me on purpose and a 12 year old screaming obscenities in my face just this week alone. On top of that, the marking, planning and scrutiny are exhausting. Planning my escape but it'll take a while

My niece is considering a move to secondary teaching and has been doing formal observation as part of the application process. Her first has been in the school she attended 10 years ago, a highly rated and successful London suburban comprehensive. She said the pupils are generally polite and well-mannered, as they were in her time, but that there is constant low level talking across the classes and ability groups in a way that she thinks wasn’t there in her time ( I did suggest maybe seeing it from the other side of the desk gives a different perspective! )

I don't think you can say as a whole the independent system is different and they will be expelled instantly. I have had children in both state and private and have seen awful behaviour in independent.
I've also witnessed awful behaviour of the children on the train from the local independent school.

In our case the main culprits parents contributed a lot of money to the schools which definitely imo shaded the situation.

My daughter is in a very small free school. Although there are definitely some issues behaviour is a hundred times better than anywhere else she has been.
I think the difference is size. All the staff know every child and every child knows every staff member.
I think that's probably key to the independent situation too.

It’s definitely ‘blame the teacher’ culture. The child blames the teacher and then their parents back the child up. Therefore respect is lost. Parents have no control and teachers have no control. But you aren’t allowed to discipline them anymore so everyone has become an entitled snowflake. Bad behaviour is encouraged because they get rewarded for their disruption.

I also remember the pschyo teacher that asked us to do something, clean the board I think then came up behind my friend and I and hit us around the head for not being sat down. I do think it’s swung to far the otter way but I’m glad those people have been rooted out of the profession.

I also have an ex MIL who work part time for 15 years following a 2 year teacher training course college basically - she then retired at 55 on £1500 a month pension. She’s 80 ... so you can see why people have previously believed it to be a cushy number. It was.

I fear some teachers entered the profession for the free bursary rather than a genuine wish to teach, so may not have been of sufficient calibre to start with. I would prefer that the bursary monies were spent rewarding those who actually stick with it for a few years, rather than being squandered on people who think I may as well give it a go for the free money, but drop out soon afterwards.

They have started doing that in some subjects Vivaldi1678 - getting a lower rate during the training year with the balance added on for a few years after. I went with my adult niece to an information evening for those interested in mature PGCE at local university that specialises in teacher training and there were a few ‘chancers’ there who were swiftly disabused of any notion that it was in any way a route to easy money.

I think people do know how bad it is. How can they not do?
The thing is a lot of teachers wont leave even if they hate the job because they will not be able to earn as much doing something else.

I think the parents of the decent children who behave most of the time DO know and are as sick of the behaviour issues as the teachers are.
I have a child with special needs and sensory issues who constantly complains about behaviour and noise in her classes.

Yep and that’s also the reason why we moved to a private school (yes I am VERY aware that we are lucky to be able o do that)
The behaviour was awful, made worse by the fact that the reduction in budget has meant less support staff to be able to walk around the corridors and keep pupils ‘in line’ (if you can call it like this).
I also has been made worse because school struggle so much to find teachers in the first place anyway. Having a string of supply teachers doesn’t help the general behaviour of the class with other teachers. Been unable to find teachers that can handle said class (there has been a few there too) doesn’t help either as often it’s the other teachers that end up filling the gap (think one teacher calling another from their class to restore some sort of calm on the class etc...)
Things had moved downhill A LOT in the last 3~4years in our local school.

And yes this was a school that is ‘good’ and certainly one of the best ones we have around (area is very deprived where I am..).
I’ve posted before about the attitude of the pupils as well as their expectations on here and was told it didn’t exist. It was just in mind because schools aren’t as bad as that

The thing is a lot of teachers wont leave even if they hate the job because they will not be able to earn as much doing something else.

Hmm... I’ll disgree with that. Nowdays a lot of teachers (I think it’s close to 50% but the teachers in here will be able to correct me there) actually give up teaching less than 5 years in the job. Those people are usually young and just find something else to do.
I know a few who are just doing some private tutoring too.
And teaching isn’t that well paid for the hours they are doing.

So I suspect what is keeping teachers there is more the fact that they LOVE teaching.

I have 3 DC in 3 different independent schools and I have never once heard of a pupil swearing at a teacher. Not ever. At one of the schools, 7 pupils were expelled fairly recently because they were known to have accepted a packet of weed outside of the school premises. I don’t even think it came into the school. There is a total no drugs policy and they have to stick to it. I’ve never heard of pupils walking out of class, etc. They would be straight on the phone to parents and you would be in a disciplinary meeting ASAP. If you’re child doesn’t behave within expectations, they have hundreds of others on a waiting list who will. Teachers come in to teach their subjects, they’re not social workers or riot police.