Is behaviour out of control in a lot of schools?

[Sophie12319]

Not sure whether to move DD (10) to another school. Everyday she's coming home saying she can't learn as there are a group of boys who throw stuff about the classroom, shout out when the teacher is talking, walk about the classroom in lesson. She has said teacher has sent them to headteacher in the past but it carries on.

This is not a teacher bashing thread btw (in fact, I have the upmost respect for DD's teacher as I have seen the boys behaviour at the school gate and I don't know how she does a whole day), maybe more of a parent bashing of why some parents let their kids behave like this?

Anyway, back to the point of thread, I spoke to my sister about moving her to which she said there's no point as he DS' school is the same.
Feel a bit hopeless as I feel DD's education is being ruined! I've emailed the school before about their behaviour but I feel at a loss!

But similarly @UsernameAlreadyTaken101 based entirely on your logic, you can't say for certain that every single child acting this way is doing so because they're having problems at home, some of them could well be, but some of them could be doing it just because.

I think the 'gentle parenting' craze has had a huge impact on children, they are never taught that they can't just do what they want, or that they have to factor in other people. Covid and lockdowns will have also had a huge impact on childrens behaviour and mental health too. Add that to the lack of funding and resources, and huge class sizes, huge social media influence and you have pretty much a perfect storm.

Agreed.
A lot of children are being brought up with no boundaries, with parents who want to be their friends and who indulge their every whim. The word 'no' is an unknown to them. Makes teaching them very difficult.
Yes, some behaviour is an expression of trauma or unmet need but equally there are plenty of kids who enjoy disrupting.

That's a very narrow/uneducated point. That is a tiny part of the problem - bad behaviour is the main issue full stop.

I think behaviour post-covid goes way deeper than just poor parenting. That has been around forever and a day. There has definitely been a shift in the last couple of years.

I've been reading about how children's social engagement systems are not being developed properly due to a number of issues. Firstly the use of screens and limited face to face interactions, obviously made worse by the impact of covid isolation. Secondly, poor attachments formed in the early years, again due to the stress of caregivers during covid but also increased stress on parents in recent years societally.

Children who do not develop strong social engagement struggle with concentration, with screening out distractions, with connecting with others etc. So a huge impact on young children in the classroom. They become more self centred and less able to make decisions. They spend more time in fight/flight mode and so mental health issues like anxiety/depression become more common.

In secondary at least, social media filled the void of school during lockdowns and Covid so why would a kid listen to a teacher when an influencer is more interesting and relevant (in their view). It also means the morals of these young people are at an all time low for the same reason, hence the fights being live streamed on Snapchat, the cyber bullying etc for kudos. It’s sick but it’s the reality now and schools are bearing the brunt while everyone expects them to fix the problem. The trouble is, the kids are with their parents 17 hours a day, so without their input, schools are onto a loser every which way. Our local PRU has closed to admissions this week as they’re so overwhelmed.
Private schools aren’t immune either, judging from what colleagues in that sector are saying.
it is very, very depressing.

According to Anne Longfield, it’s an epidemic. So no, YANBU.

It’s an epidemic - an awful lot of it is down to piss poor parenting. You only have to look at the threads on here to see parents believe everything their kids tell them nowadays and support their kids over the teachers all the time.

Im an ex teacher - because of parents.

As someone who works in the CJS, we are seeing higher and higher numbers of YO's and unfortunately many more 18/19 year old people on probation.

I can see the number rising and rising each year. The next decade is going to be brutal.

Whilst some of the POP's (people on probation) do have a horrific traumatic past, we are seeing more and more who have nothing that would come close to trauma. They are just well...offending for the sake of offending, they are proving difficult to manage.

You ask them to do something or adhere to an order they refuse, they hink they are "untouchable" and then when we have to breech them on their court orders/license some have a lightbulb moment of "oh shit people can tell me what to do" and some just continue in the CJS system with a cavalier attitude and disruptive behaviour.

I've no idea what the solution is to it all though.

Obviously I don't know the circumstances in the OP's post or any of the of others who are claiming the children are just little shits or feral (or whatever horrible name a grown adult wants to label a child). However I have taught children from 4-12 years old from a range of backgrounds and can honestly say children aren't 'bad' for no reason. Naughty, silly, annoying, yes but not behaviour so bad it stops other children from learning. Yes there is more 'gentle parenting' now and it's often misconstrued as having no boundaries or consequences but there's a lot of outcry on here about schools being out of control and children filled with fear on a daily basis.
If all these posters have such horrendous situations in their local schools and if things really are as bad as they say then actively seek change!!!

What a massive disservice left wing, namby pamby politics have done to our children. @Fizzadora here was me thinking we’d had a conservative government since 2010.

Whoever asked about primary - yes sorry it’s not great there either. My son is in reception. School has high expectations of behaviour, two parents pulled their Reception kids out because they didn’t like being told their kids were misbehaving. Some of the year 2/3s behave appallingly outside of school, parents don’t seem to care (I told one off for attempting to smash up the toddler playground equipment, in full view of his parent) . And this is a school in an expensive village where half the parents turn up in range rovers and have houses worth £1m+, for the info of whoever blamed it all on benefits scroungers. I can already see the levels of entitlement being drummed in to kids that will come out as shitty behaviour in secondary.

Do you teach? I'm not sure how someone with 20 years teaching experience, a degree, a postgraduate diploma and a masters in education can be described as uneducated but I suppose you don't know me so fair enough! 😂

But when a large chunk of the class are being naughty, silly and annoying (low level disruption) it makes delivering lessons twice as hard and utterly exhausting. And makes it harder for those who want to learn. This type of behaviour has massively increased in the 30+ years I've been teaching. As so many others in the profession, I'm leaving in July.

I went to a middle class faith school and also a traditional grammar. The faith school was quite high up national ranking tables and parents were desperate to get - it was crap, behaviour was awful and kids would have done much better at a more disciplined school and been happier with less bullying.

The traditional grammar was bloody hard work, iron discipline and mountains of homework and sport.

Faith schools are not all they are cracked up to be.

You don't think all that's been tried? You think there hasn't been any shouting?

You think a damn thing has been achieved?

What would make my life immeasurably easier as a teacher would be if kids just STOPPED ARGUING THE TOSS AND DID WHAT THEY WERE TOLD.

We have seen a move to less authoritarian parenting - Supernanny-style endless discussions about behaviour and 'why did you do that? It makes me feel sad when you do that' sort of thing means we have classes of kids who expect a discussion about everything, and for behaviour to be a negotiation. 'Put your bottle down' 'I was just....' 'Stop talking' 'But Billy is talking...' or even more fucking irritating 'Stop talking' and the affronted gasp and the exaggerated gesturing around the room. Kid sits in wrong seat 'sit in your seat' 'oh but me and Johnny work SO WELL together and we'll be good and just give us a try and etc etc' you are disrupting my bloody lesson. 'Stand behind your chairs' 'Johnny you're holding the class up' 'I don't care if you need to talk to Josh about where to meet after school just stand behind your chair'. FFS.

There are lots of people on here talking about SEN or trauma and there's no doubt an increase in children with SEN, and children in extremely difficult home circumstances, increased poverty and so on - numbers of kids on FSM is rocketing. But alongside that we've got kids who are not traumatised, without SEN, who do not expect to actually have to do what they are told.

Children definitely have shorter attention spans than they used to even when I started teaching. Low level disruption is incredibly annoying but it's generally manageable and can be nipped in the bud with firm boundaries and expectations and consequences for not following the rules. I can't imagine it being so bad as to drive someone away from the profession. If it's escalated beyond low level then a different approach is needed and management need to be supportive.
It's a bloody hard job but it shouldn't be easy when you're dealing with something so important as child development. That's why we get so many holidays to de-stress! People outside of education have no idea what it's like but always have an opinion because they once went to school however many years ago. 🙄

I’m so sick of being compassionate. So sick of it. ‘I’m sorry wee jimmy has punched your son every day for a term but he’s in foster care’. I dont give a shit. He shouldn’t be in a school if he can’t help but punch his classmates. If someone walked down the street punching people there would be consequences. Kids that do this have no place in mainstream school ms whatsoever. Have some compassion to the victims of this endless violence.

Hear hear @noblegiraffe, exactly this! Kids who think it's ok to answer back, think the rules don't apply to them, think it's ok to wander around the classroom and my particular bugbear, who need to suck on their f'ing water bottles incessantly because mummy is worried they'll get dehydrated.

You don't teach secondary do you?

This might have been mentioned upthread, but the problems with recruiting and retaining teachers and spiralling poor behaviour are a vicious circle.

Lots of supply teachers leads to a less containing environment, more bad behaviour from low level to dangerous, so teachers move to supply or leave, so kids have more supply teachers etc etc.

Obviously, the pandemic, increasing poverty and temporary accommodation, screens and social media have played a part in recent years, and these have all been harder to mitigate in environments where staff teams have gaps and no chance of filling them, staff are demoralised and treated like shit by the government and there's constant anxiety about where the next pack of glue sticks is coming from.

Here's the thing; as a parent I don't want my children to be schooled with children like this. I don't want schools to indulge princess behaviour from girls - at one point a child in the class came into school with a crown and a sash on for her birthday. This child is a self centred nightmare obviously and her mother is oblivious. And this child is a bully and she is disruptive.

Any school with good discipline is worth it. Because the parents are backing up the teachers.

I think we were there, we just weren't diagnosed and we were trained into being quiet about our needs. We (ND kids) were taught that our issues were our own fault and we should be ashamed of being inadequate/faulty. Now it's accepted so the issues show more. Plus the level of individual entitlement has increased dramatically, so kids with issues will make a huge thing of it.

Looking back, I could name the kids in my primary class with undiagnosed SEN. At least one with global developmental delays, minimum of three autistic (including me), one extreme ADHD boy, probably two ADHD girls. In a class of 30, off the top of my head, thirty years later.

@Nanny0gg No I don't. Believe me though there are significant challenges in primary schools as well.
Particularly with undiagnosed ASN children or kids who can't cope with mainstream who lash out because their needs aren't being met. A lot of the kids are bigger than me too! At least in secondary you can pass them on for a bit of respite. We have them all day .😛

This might have been mentioned upthread, but the problems with recruiting and retaining teachers and spiralling poor behaviour are a vicious circle.

I had a Y10 kid being a dick the other day and I asked him why because he wasn't normally a dick. He said he'd had two cover lessons (cover lessons are basically seen as doss lessons) in a row and wasn't really in the mood to work as a result. Kids need to be in the routine of turning up to a lesson and actually doing some work.

Where should Wee Jimmy be? Why should he not deserve an education because he had a shit start to his life and is scared and doesn't trust adults? Some of the posters on here are despicable people and I can't actually believe they are parents. Maybe your child expressed a similar nasty attitude towards Wee Jimmy . It wouldn't be that difficult to imagine if this is his mother's attitude towards a CHILD his age. Children lead by example. Hence why Wee Jimmy doesn't know any better YET but can be helped. If you continue with your narrow minded Daily Mail attitudes then your child will grow up with a sneering, entitled attitude to those less fortunate and an inflated sense of self worth. Good luck with that.