Who would want to be a teacher now?

[Painauchocolats]

I've just read an article (found on the DM) that a 53 year old teacher has taken her own life before she was due to appear in court for accidentally catching a pupil's hair. This was whilst she tried to confiscate the girl's mobile phone.

A male teacher (also in the DM) faces being struck off for shouting 'Who the hell do you think you are?" At some pupils who filmed tik toks during his lesson, and slammed his hand on the desk.

Sometimes teachers lose their temper, especially if this behaviour is incessant. Who can blame them? This is why pupils' behaviour is so poor these days, because there are no consequences, and because of things like this.

I work in an outstanding school in a very affluent area, so much so that even I am priced out of living anywhere within the catchment area. Behaviour, like any school, was never perfect, but it was manageable and the children learnt. Our results were fantastic and it felt like we worked as a team with parents, with only a few exceptions. Since lockdown it's not the case. Key stage 3 have come back unable to behave in the classroom. For the first time in my career, I have been sworn at (from a year 7 of all ages!) and students refusing to do homework because getting a negative point is better than doing it (they are very open about it). I've caught several year 7/8 students in the STAFF toilets vaping when they should have been in class, and colleagues have caught them outright vaping in class. They just don't care. Parents are keen to excuse their behaviour 'because of covid'. Those children are now in their exams years and are well behind where they should be. Either the curriculum in some subjects has had to be slowed down because they are not doing the work at home or misbehaviour is stopping the teacher from teaching, which means several colleagues have mentioned they will not finish the course in time for the exam. Management are panicking because the number of underachieving students has massively increased and from the last lost of reports, our predicted progress 8 score puts us in the minus. Parents have responded to these reports as us being too harsh and having unrealistic expectations post-lockdown, completely missing the fact that we do not set the exams or grade boundaries. As each new cohort comes in, the behaviour is just getting worse. My mental health has really suffered and now I suffer from anxiety. The number of staff suffering from MH issues in the last two years has escalated to the point that our HR team have had training in cbt and are now offering in-house cbt to limit the absences.

Blueflag22
I am assuming you have checked the school policy on uniform and have already discussed the tie issue before you sent your child to this school? If so then your child has I am assuming been given permission to not wear a tie and therefore why would they get a detention?

Moaning about sanctions for rules that the school have already informed parents about is however not OK. I have kids whose parents complain about phones being confiscated. The policy on phones is clear. Parents are free to discuss this and decide that their child will go elsewhere if they can't agree an adjustment.

I think adjustments can be made to some rules but they must be agreed in advance.

One of our girls attends a workshop for vulnerable teenage girls (who would be open to control, abuse, etc). A member of staff takes her there. Member of staff told me that the girls barely listen to the woman running the workshop (she's excellent, having worked as a youth leader all her years), are on their phones, and one girl rocked up 40 minutes late with a MacDonald's. I mean, where the fuck do you go with that? The level of entitlement in our young people is through the roof.

The school system has to change, I agree.

Asking for more from teachers who are already stretched to breaking point is part of the point of this thread.

In terms of ties, most secondary schools will agree adjustments, and honestly I'm not a fan of ties on uniforms anyway, I think they cause more problems than they solve.

But honestly, if you want your child to go to school in a class of up to, let's say, 34 others with only one adult present, many of whom will also have some kind of SEN, to some extent they have to fit the system too, or it becomes unmanageable.

In a smaller group, with a TA present, it's much, much easier to make adjustments.

I’m a secondary teacher and worry about the environment my own children will be in when they reach secondary. The behaviour is awful, even the ‘good’ ones need managing and we spend so much time following up the behaviour, usually with parents who don’t care.

You see so many parents on mumsnet who will say "a bright child will do well anywhere". I don't think they have any idea what it's like in even an average secondary.

The problem is that the bar is set too low. At the local private school, the young people will be on Saturday detention if found using their phone on the premises.
Can you imagine trying to implement that in state schools? 😂

Also, exclusions are internal now. The offending child has to sit with a member of senior management all day, which takes up their time. God forbid they should be sent home for their feckless parents to take responsibility!

Reading some of the other threads on here, it's very clear parents also expect teachers to take medical responsibility for children in some cases. And one of them is going really nastily after the teacher because things have gone wrong.

I've been put in this situation before, and it's bloody stressful and dangerous all round.

And a lot of scepticism about the level of input schools are asked to have in mental health situations.

I think reading those threads would be enough to put anyone off going into teaching.

I have worked in a secondary comp that had Saturday detentions. The headteacher ran them, they were 3 hours long and the kids had to wear full uniform. Failure to attend the detention resulted in a fixed term exclusion. Parents could not get them out of the detention. Some people set the bar exceptionally low for comp kids.

I think this is an excellent idea. Parent would have to come in to school to view the lessons. Kid would have to go on Saturday detention/be excluded

The problem is in government though. In the nearly 20 years I've been teaching the education ministers have all been so out of touch with what teaching is about. Give the job to an ex teacher.

Failure to attend the detention resulted in a fixed term exclusion. Parents could not get them out of the detention.

Parents could get them out of the detention by not sending them to the detention, and by not giving a shit about a fixed term exclusion. Besides which, I'm not sure where schools would actually stand in terms of their right to compel parents to send their child to a Saturday detention. I worked at a state school with Saturday detentions too, but it was a highly over-subscribed, 'selection by the back door' Catholic school with very invested parents.

Then parents can see how their children behave and whether the teacher is responding properly.

I have often wished that parents could be a fly on the wall and see the behaviour of their children. However, in some cases I don't think they are interested in evidence. They will simply back their child and blame teachers, whatever the situation.

I 've seen that happen. Parent shown CCTV clearly showing their child had lied and what they said happened did not happen at all. Parents took it all in and replied with "I can see that but Jimmy still feels that..." and wanted it sorted. How the hell were we supposed to sort out something that didn't happen?

Everyone is being failed by children being allowed smartphone access in these sorts of settings. You can't even blame the children. It's just so sad it's being allowed to cause so many problems, and virtually impossible to opt out of it as a parent. But I've every sympathy for the teachers. There should be an outright ban in all school settings.

I completely agree, and what's more is a response appropriate to stop the behaviour and move the class on swiftly is not necessarily the same behaviour techniques used at home, so parents still wouldn't accept it's an appropriate response. You see this with the gentle parenting threads with parents moaning that a teacher shouted at their child instead of wasting everyone else's lesson time further by giving a long winded explanation of why they shouldn't have done what they did (despite often being old enough to know better).

Agree. My sibling was attacked by a group of teenage girls back in the day and the parents were provided with CCTV as they refused to believe the police saying that it had happened. They saw the CCTV - four on one, my sibling literally lying on the ground being kicked - and said that my sibling must have instigated it or be going along with it. Getting them to accept that their children were entirely at fault was impossible - they would only accept fault on all sides.

It’d be exactly the same with CCTV at school. Especially as it doesn’t capture speech - the kids would say the teacher said XYZ and the parents would back them up and demand the teacher be sanctioned.

Parents like this are literally ungovernable. As are therefore their kids.