DD2 is in Year 5, class of 28 children. Their Teacher is experienced, approachable and kind, but the majority of the children in her class appear to lack the ability to simply be nice to one another, or to use good manners.
Examples include purposefully excluding one or more children from joining in games in the playground, purposefully tripping children up, stealing from fellow pupil's bags and pencil cases, telling lies to the MTAs about each other and swearing - lots and LOTS of swearing.
The school is in a decent area (if that's relevant), no high crime rate, school has a 'Good' OFSTED rating (Sept '18), not a high percentage of SEN children in the class and there are 2 other classes of around 30 children in Year 5 at the school which don't have anything like the same issues.
DD2 is confident, caring, conscientious and sensitive; she is very empathetic and as such, finds witnessing all of this unkindness very difficult and upsetting. She has often tried to step in and stop it happening, or ask them to apologise to each other, but the culprits either laugh about it, refuse or continue the behaviour. She has become very jaded about the situation and although we discuss it regularly, she now feels there's 'no point, cos they won't change anyway', which makes her really sad.
I have been in and spoken to the Class Teacher 3 times since September and we have discussed various 'reward' schemes, such as 'Positivity Points' to encourage kindness between the pupils, but the Teacher seems to think that this is just a particularly bad class, where a few mean children have been behaving this way and it's sort of caught on and become the standard way they treat each other. The Teacher says she has tried sending the main culprits to sit in other classes or to the Headmaster's office when a particularly bad incident occurs, she has tried talking to the children as a group and individually, reminding them of the school's expectations of them in terms of their behaviour, she's spoken to parents, but nothing seems to be changing. DD2 comes home unhappy nearly every day as a result of having witnessed some act of unkindness between her peers.
DD2 is popular amongst her classmates and as a result, hasn't been a target for this unkindness, but it's still having a huge, detrimental affect on her. She has always loved school until Year 5 and now every morning she wakes up saying "I don't want to go to school, everyone will just be mean to each other". She does go - she's very conscientious and rule-abiding, another reason why she is so upset by all this bad behaviour. She can't understand (and nor can I!) how these children can behave so badly, be told off for it in a serious fashion, only to continue to behave badly the next day!
The Class Teacher seems as frustrated as we are, but resigned to the 'fact' that they're just a tough class. I've found her really approachable and she's been happy to make time to talk through the situation with me and work together on ideas to improve things, but I'm starting to feel like she's given up trying to fix it.
So; AIBU to expect a class of 9 and 10 year olds be nice to each other? If not, WIBU to let the Class Teacher know that I've appreciated her help so far, but now I feel as if I need to approach the Head, as the situation is not improving? We're already halfway through the school year and we're starting to wonder if we should be thinking about asking for DD to move to one of the other Yr 5 classes - or even to a new school.
My little girl is so sad, I just want her to be happy and enjoy school again.