How much is your class disrupted by bad behaviour?

[Catinthetwat]

I was just wondering how much of a problem behaviour is in the classroom. I keep hearing that it's getting out of hand.

Interested to hear from teachers and TA's...

I think this very often isn't the case though. Some of my very challenging pupils are simply never told no. Their parents indulge their behaviour. It's rarely the least able kids who are causing the disruption in my experience.

this

So May children have never been told to give their head a wobble
Some people won’t even give their child a hair cut without their express permission

The kids I teach don't make teaching awful, even "lumped together". They have reinvigorated my love of teaching after nearly two decades in mainstream. In fact, lumping them together in high quality AP is really positive for them. As ever though, funding...

Absolutely none whatsoever in my eldest year 11 classes. Outstanding state comprehensive.

In my middle ones year, quite a lot in some classes with weaker teachers in year 7. Coming to the end of year 8 she tells me that it has all stopped.

Youngest, prep school. A couple of children who have some issues but they’re bright so the school deals with them. Doesn’t appear to be a problem for the other children. Middle was at a different prep and whilst there were no “naughty” children there was a fair bit of larking about and annoying the teacher

Funding of course, because classes of 6-8 are teachable, but in a class of 30+, as in mainstream....

TheFallenMadonna

I think it’s about the culture of not valueing education
In a lot of countries they class sizes are double they have less resources and you would never hear a student call a teacher a c££t or assault a teacher

Sorry but my cousin lives in West Indies and education by parents is viewed a lot differently I believe in Asia and Africa also class sizes are larger but their is not the disruption

I agree with the following :
New gsce not accessible for weaker students - they get stuck, get demotivated, disrupt more as a work avoidance strategy.
Class size - class of 34 means you can't help each one as much as they need. Weaker students inevitably suck up a lot of attention so middle ground students can fall into low level disruption.
Wide ability range - gcse class of 33, target grades ranging from A-E (this meant 2 different papers in my subject as some foundation and some higher tier). Impossible to differentiate effectively for this range of ability unless you can teach 2-3 different lessons simultaneously.

Lack of parental support is a huge issue - overruling the teacher where detentions or other sanctions are concerned basically tells the child they can do what they like and mummy will hand them a get out of jail free card.
Lack of funding means no support for SEN students
Lack of support from SLT - unwillingness to apply serious sanctions or permanently exclude.

Sorry, I meant funding for Alternative Provision, where very challenging children can be taught effectively in groups of 8, rather than everyone struggling with them in classes of 30+.

Children aren't getting the support they need

Its always someone else's fault, never blame the poor little snowflakes for their bad behaviour. FFS parents need to step up, start raising their children to be behave and support the school.

SWITCH off the internet and take away their telephones, they are children!

Secondary teacher (music).

Behaviour is the hardest part of the job. Agree with other posters in that in most cases the parents are to blame. "You can't take my phone off me", "You can't stop me" etc. I've had pupils ring their parents in the classroom and try and hand me the phone to talk to them so the parent can tell me what to do! I only asked them to remove their outdoor jacket, or put their phone away, or told them they had a test coming up.

In terms of managing it, with support you can remove the pupil from the class to attend another class or cool down\isolation then carry on. Yay!

With no support then sorry but it has to be a case of the whole class suffers if you have to deal with the behaviour within your classroom walls. If 'John' can't play the xylophone without throwing the beaters across the room then nobody can. That way, nobody gets hurt. Learning suffers, but at least everyone still has their eyes. I've had to teach classes where pupils throw chairs across the room with no other support. It's tough but believe me most teachers are trying their best! There's nothing less satisfying than feeling like a whole lesson is wasted by bad behaviour.

Walkingdeadfangirl - Children aren't getting the support they need. Children with severe disabilities are left to cope on their own in mainstream classrooms because there is no money for a TA. That is until the school can cope with the distressed behaviour no longer and excludes them. Special school is not an option because all the special schools are full so the child ends up with no education. This is what some families are dealing with because of lack of funding.

This is primary infant age by the way, not teenagers. That is how little support is out there.

Dd is in year 8 and totslly sick of the constant disruption in her maths and science class. We are moving her to a private girls school.

@Walkingdeadfangirl while some parents are an issue, the lack of support for children contributes too.

We have 4 kids with SEN and various needs now. Used to be 6, one left one is still enrolled but educated off site. There's only me and the teacher and 25 other kids with their own issues or silly behaviours or whatever going on, like self harm, MH issues etc.

We are a good team, we tend to spot triggers quickly , and try to support them as needed. Many times shit still hits the fan and those are the hardest days,because no matter what we feel like we failed someone..and we probably did.

We are not the only class with a high number of SEN. There is another where the 1 to 1 , is actually 1 to 3.

There is only one special needs school in the area (some kids come from miles away). Their criteria is getting stricter and stricter. We have a girl finally going there next year. I say finally because she'll be in y6. For 6 fucking years she struggled in mainstream until they finally deemed her severe enough to join.

All this is a culmination of many factors...poverty,parenting,funding, expectations etc . You can't just blame the parents, or the teachers .

So what's the answer? Could it be to bring back schools for those with specialist needs? And grammar schools. Then technical schools. Drag up a memory of when it was understood different children had different needs. Gosh could that even extrapolate to the fact that being well educated has nothing to do with obtaining lots of qualifications.

Hat off, gum out, say please and thank you, etc.

I blame the parents

If anyone has got a real suggestion for how to actually deal with this I would love to know...

Yes of course there are but people are not willing to fund it. Blaming the parents is a sort of moot point really because education is supposed to be a leveler, it's supposed to overcome the disadvantages of the parents.

The boys who are disruptive in dds maths do not have special needs. It's second set maths and they are perfectly NT. They just have zero respect for the young ,ineffective teacher (tbf according to dd she just sits at her desk sending emails and handing out worksheets)

So what's the answer? Could it be to bring back schools for those with specialist needs? And grammar schools. Then technical schools

Firstly we need to start valuing all skills equally. It’s no good having specialised schools if one is seen as being for brainy kids and the other for thickos. In adult life a non academic job such as plasterer will earn as much as an academic job such as teacher, if not more. Artists are valued in adult society yet kids who are good at art but not maths are told they’re thick. Yet in schools only academic proficiency seems to be valued. Non academic skills are barely covered.

Different schools would solve the problem of boredom and disinterest to a large extent. Academic kids can study with less disruption while kids who are better at practical skills can actually do something useful and interesting, and (crucially) at which they are able to succeed. Sweden and Germany both have this type of school system and it’s superior imo.

Dd says that she has told the boys to shut up and they've said they don't need gcses as they are going to be famous. Idiotic but boys mature more slowly i guess

Blaming the parents is a sort of moot point really because education is supposed to be a leveler, it's supposed to overcome the disadvantages of the parents.

Nope.

In a utopia, education would be a SOCIAL leveller, and a good education a means for social mobility, but the assumption was the parents would raise their children properly, teaching them manners, discipline, authority and how to behave properly in society. Education is there to teach people, which is very, very difficult if the little shits are throwing chairs.

I can't remember who said it up thread, but the current main issue in my experience is the ridiculously difficult GCSE curriculum that is completely inaccessible for many students. It turns those students off so quickly and, I imagine, they are experiencing the same demotivation in most subjects. Imagine knowing you are going to fail in every lesson every day and you have no chance to succeed, despite the excellent teachers trying everything they can to help you.

This results in silly, mucking about, arguments and fights between these kids. They bring so much baggage from previous lessons or what happened at break time, that sometimes it's impossible to get them to focus and when they're supposed to be focusing on something completely irrelevant to them (seemingly) like the equation for anaerobic respiration in microbes, it makes the job 20x worse.

Unfortunately there are no access courses or single GCSE courses, or practical courses which could be accessible for these students. Who is going to benefit from these students failing and ending up with no qualifications? I can't work it out. Why isn't there an alternative route for them?

Obviously this isn't the only issue. There are many students across ability the range who think the rules do not apply to them, but if a teacher applies the rules consistently, and SLT back them up (crucial!) there is far less low level dispruption or defiance in my experience. It's not easy though when you just want to say, FFS sit down and stfu!

They just have zero respect for the young ,ineffective teacher (tbf according to dd she just sits at her desk sending emails and handing out worksheets)

Please don't assume that this is entirely true. I very much doubt that this is what happens all lesson every lesson. It's possible that the teacher us emailing for senior staff support, for example, or has reached the point in a lesson at which she knows she can no longer get through. It's all too easy to blame an 'ineffective' teacher who is going under due to a culture of poor behaviour and a lack of decent support from SLT (with the best will in the world some of them don't know how to deal with the problem, and in any case their hands are tied if there's a better school around the corner and they need bums on seats).

I'm a good teacher with nearly two decades of experience but I'm dealing with more poor behaviour than ever now. If I was just starting out at this point I wouldn't last a term. Don't indulge your DD's perception that this is down to one young teacher. It undermines her and it exacerbates the problem.

but if a teacher applies the rules consistently, and SLT back them up

IME the second bit of this is way, way the most important bit of behaviour management in schools.

Low level disruption flourishes when high level disruption isn’t dealt with effectively. When a kid is wrecking your lesson and you call for help and no one comes, when you go up the behaviour system with a kid, they get to the top of what you can give as a teacher and nothing more serious happens, when kids don’t turn up to detentions with SLT and it’s not followed up, when there isn’t an isolation room to remove kids to who are in no fit state to be in lessons, when kids are given endless warnings and chances instead of sanctions - that’s when it goes to shit.

When I was a child and MIL was a deputy head though teachers were very respectable and had high ideals and values. I was shocked when my DC started school 20 years ago to find that teachers had tattoos, flip flops, did not necessarily support our values, certainly did not push an academic agenda or push v bright children, and took their politics to school. No behaviour issues there because of the intake and supportive parents who did support their children.

This is where I become cofused however because the staff at dd's state secondary (formall a holy grail school) appeared the diametric opposite of the primary yet whilst banging on about hard work and academics did nothing about behaviour but golly still took their politics to work.

We felt there was no alternative but to send the children orivately expectations were high, behaviour was superb, role models exceptional. Classes were not that small.

Like a poster above I think there is a signifucant issue about valuing vocational skills within primary and secondary education and the failure to recognis the value to society of essential trades: plumbers, carpenters, mechanics, hairdressers, beauticians, all small business people. Not forgetting bus drivers, cooks, porters, etc. Where would we be without those people? Where does education support those occupations or indicate any value or respect for them? Now consider that the majority of parents will hold those or similar occupations and it is little wonder there is a tension between the exoectations of teachers and parents but I'm not sure the issue can be laid solely at the door of parents.

Would I be prepared to pay more tax? Yes I would but I would have to be reassured that additional funding woud be spent on the academic needs of all children rather than the academic aspirations suited only to a minirity and made to fit all. And we wonder why childrens' mental health is on the skids. Common sense and reality check required says this bear of little academic brain.