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!

This.

We're having the same battle with the LA: my son absolutely cannot cope in mainstream. We have all the reports that state this. He can't access a classroom now even with 1 to 1 support.

LA have decided mainstream without any support is just fine.

It's fucking infuriating, as well as being the most stressful thing I've ever had to go through.

Also, do kids really get a chance of decent life from school nowadays? Is it of any actual use to them? Could working hard in school get some of them out of poverty for example? Or are we asking them to conform to rules that have become obsolete and have no benefit in the current late-stage capitalism degradation of society? Kids may be young, but they can smell bullshit, and perhaps being at home over lockdowns highlighted the "bullshit" part of the modern school proposition.

Invariably education is the best way to get out of the poverty cycle. I don't mean going on to get a degree even, but well paid vocational jobs you have greater potential in if you have a better grasp of certain subjects and most importantly it gives you options.

Forgot to add: and then we deal with the judgemental looks, parental complaints about him being there and feeling of utter despair that we are "shit parents" because our son has severe ASD but his needs aren't recognised. This isn't our fault. He suffers so much because he can speak. It's ridiculous and disgusting that his ability to talk stops him getting appropriate support.

If he was non-verbal he would be in the right school. And we'd get understanding instead of judgement.

My children's schools aren't like this at all. Behaviour is very good on the whole.
The behaviour at the schools I attended as a child was terrible.

HereComesMaleficent · Yesterday 19:25

Ok, my child is no angel in school, some of it's his ADHD some of it, is he chooses to just be a little wanker some days. I can tell the difference.

Well he was exceptionally disruptive and rude one day, I had a call he was possibly going to be excluded and I needed to come in. I had, had enough I knew what he was doing, monopolising on the soft touch approach. He's a tiny 9 year old sociopath I swear.

I'll be honest, I'd done the "performance parenting" let's talk about your feelings, really need to understand you blah blah blah before in the office. But this time I looked the headmistress in the eye and I said "enough, he needs to be broken, brace yourself" well ....I yelled at him, told him if I had one more call from the school I would take everything away, I pushed and pushed, the tears came, it turned into that hiccuping snivelling crying, my voice boomed and echoed round this little victorian village school corridors.

Moral of the story. He was star of the week by Friday and we've had no more "behavioural issues" in school, he's even won an extra award for being respectful and all the staff have commented on his change of attitude and behaviour. Headmistress looked shell shocked, and as I exited the office the faculty (who were eavesdropping) scurried away like sewer rats 🤣

Some kids just don't respond to soft touch, they will push and test boundaries and if you make the boundary too soft on it will go. My son is like this, sometimes you've just got to rule by tyranny, and have harsh defined boundaries and expectations.

I feel for the schools because they just can't discipline and enforce like they used to. I know when I was in primary in the 90's a telling off by the head wasn't a let's talk, quiet room and gardening club, you stood there and were berated and then sent away crying. The line had been drawn, you went too far 🤷🏻‍♀️

I always back the school up, and I think they know now my "new age performance parenting" has its limits and sometimes I'm just too exhausted from loan parenting to keep it up. 😳
I’ve done the same, soft parenting gets taken advantage of by some children and my son was an expert in the manipulation of teachers it seemed. The whole of London probably heard that bollocking but he hasn’t tried anything like that since (this was years ago, he’d been really rude to a teacher about his teaching style and then continued to disrupt the whole lesson in an act of defiance), the headteacher shook my hand as I left and expressed her gratitude. All the teachers had to do after that was threaten to call me and he’d fix up sharpish

My other children reacted positively to softer approaches and I have never had to repeat that episode (thank God!).

I totally relate to this, ^^ l have 2 dcs and the simple reason they behave very well in school or out, is that they know l will come down hard on them if they step out of line, immediately and every time....
I blame parents 100% for poor behaviour..excluding SEN...and am totally prepared (and expect) to be held responsible for the behaviour of my own dc.
The hardest thing to naviate through 17 years of parenting, was how to make them understand why they were not allowed to behave like some of the feral brats in school.

This is a big problem and always has been. There are very few ASD specific schools, and virtually no appropriate ones for academically able ASD children in particular.

I'm so sorry you're going through the same. It really is very stressful - my mental health has never been so low.

Unfortunately, even being non verbal doesn't guarantee a SEN place. My daughter is non verbal.

It ultimately comes down to money and for me, I think that might be the most tragic part of it all. But for money, our children would be getting the support they need.

My emails about SALT, OT and other therapies to the LA have all gone unanswered. They've removed phone numbers for the SEND department from the website. We have to rely on them eventually responding to one of our emails as they haven't even sent a letter to us in months.

Vocational jobs are nice and all, but I’m sure kids can see that in the UK they are streamed early in life into their destiny- for example certain subjects like Advanced Maths or Classics which are needed for the top Unis, are not taught at all in the schools were the “poors” go. This in turn decides who gets to be a politician, a judge, a journalist, a top artist and so on. Some are raised to be leaders and have a voice in society, and some are raised to serve them, from very early on.

I have a clever child with ASD, struggling in mainstream. She does not want to be homeschooled, she wants to be out of the house.
The support room where she is in school is often full of disruptive students who have nowhere else to go.
She wouldn’t cope in a specialist school either. She needs to be somewhere quiet with good routine where she can just work with other students who just want to work and not behave badly. It doesn’t exist though. Not here anyway.

The problems start from an early age and it isn’t the school’s fault, it’s very much a parenting problem.

I used to take my DC to a toddler group until a Mum started coming with her then one year old who was an aggressive little shit. He hit my DS in the face, ragged his hair, constantly stole toys from him etc and DS was only a baby at the time so I stopped going. The Mum didn’t parent him, she never stepped in to tell him off or remove him because she was too busy gabbing with her friend. I didn’t go for about 18 months but have recently started going again and she still does too. Her DS is now about 3 and he’s still the same, he still aggressively snatches toys, runs around with toy prams or trolleys purposely running into other children or spitefully running their block towers over. He’s honestly just a horrible child and she NEVER intervenes, she just sits gossiping with her friend still often at the other side of the room. You just know he’s going to give teachers problems already.

My Grandma was a primary school teacher for over 30 years and she said if a child is acting up at school it’s usually because they have a tough home life and I totally agree.

I have considered establishing schools for such children myself given nobody else seems to be doing so.

Then LAs could not claim provision does not exist and refuse to fund the places...

Taking your child out is very rarely a reflection on teaching/teachers so shouldn't ever be taken as an insult to the profession.

It's just a reflection on what the crisis in school education currently looks like. No one should be criticised for just trying to do the right thing by their child particularly when, in the case of HE, making that decision, doesn't have a negative effect on other children. I. E. As opposed to how neglectful/poor parenting can affect not only their own children but in turn, their child's classmates.

HE is trickier in many ways with younger primary age children than it is with older teens due to supervision needs. I was very hands on when mine were younger but my teens mainly study together now or alone when they're not with their tutor (a few hours a week). I'm mainly there now to make sure they have all they need in order to learn (not nearly as much as much as you'd imagine), source books when necessary, take them where they need to be - taxi service as every parent is anyway!

In terms of time consumption, if you think about how much individual attention a child in a class of 30 gets compared with one to one, a whole lot more gets covered in a much shorter period of time. Any confusion or difficulty is clear quickly and can be remedied there and then rather than it being luck of the draw if your child's struggle is even picked up in the first place let alone if the poor overwhelmed teacher has time amid crowd control to help them.

Financially, HE in itself isn't expensive at all (plus bonus of no uniforms/school holiday price rises etc!) but yes, can be tricky with younger ones if you need both parent incomes. I am lucky to work from home so hasn't been a problem fitting around HE.

Watching the crisis continue to unfold in schools, particularly when it affects good friends, has made me incredibly sad to see but at the same time made me heave a huge sigh of relief we're not a part of it.

So why are some schools better than others?

A mixture of reasons. Area/demographic, the range of schools on offer locally and their historic reputations (and which demographics they appeal to), leadership and continuity of leaders and staff over the course of recent years, the school's ability to attract good staff. The problem is that it's often a vicious/virtuous circle. Once you're good it's easier to remain good because you are likely to attract good staff and aspirational parents.

In terms of time consumption, if you think about how much individual attention a child in a class of 30 gets compared with one to one, a whole lot more gets covered in a much shorter period of time. Any confusion or difficulty is clear quickly and can be remedied there and then rather than it being luck of the draw if your child's struggle is even picked up in the first place let alone if the poor overwhelmed teacher has time amid crowd control to help them.

Yes. And that little bit of support tailored to their specific needs as well. So teaching them to work independently and at their own pace but with specific support on the particular areas they need it. And able to focus far more on topics of interest/ particular skill, talent, ability. During the lockdowns it was hell for parents of primary and nursery children but I have often thought how if that had had happened when I was at secondary school it would have been heaven compared to the disruptive, horrific environment we had, paced at the level of the very slowest. So much could have been learned during that time - years and years wasted - and having to endure this appalling environment every day surrounded by horrendous people I'd never associate with as an adult but being a child with no choice but to endure it, the mental health damage of all of that, and for minimal learning anyway! In fact in YR11 once I was living alone so was effectively my own legal guardian my attendance to school was 12% and I achieve the highest GCSE grades in the school by far. They threatened not to enter me for the exams but then realised I'd raised their average grade a fair bit, just from reading books at home. For certain children, with intelligence and a desire to learn, homeschooling would be far preferable to this current shambles at secondary level. It is a shame however, that schools with a tolerable environment and inspiring teachers with real-world knowledge of the practical applications of their subjects and proper enforcement of appropriate behaviour standards and sensibly-sized classes do not exist for such children who actually want to learn, because a hybrid of that and learning from home to pursue independent study would be preferable in many cases.

The lack of parental support is one of the main reasons for the poor behaviour, they seem to think because they bred them no-one can be allowed to chastise their off-spring.

If they were as hot on their responsibilities as they are on their perceived rights schools would be better for the majority.

Not a chance! I once told a girl to pick up the crisp packet she'd deliberately thrown on the floor and she informed me that she was providing work for the cleaners, that's what they were there for. This escalated to her Head of Year contacting her mother, who totally agreed with the brat!

You're absolutely right, at Reception age it doesn't.

My son is moving to secondary though. It's absolutely heartbreaking.

We're mid appeal, waiting for tribunal, and it was his annual review last week. LA, obviously, didn't bother to attend the meeting. I want to take it the whole way now, so the judge can give them a bollocking and it can go on public record.

So are all the children, 'kicking off' in class in need of 'support'? none of them just lack discipline? in fact I'd go as far as to say the majority just lack discipline and it's the few that need additional support. Correct me if that's not what you are saying.

I made no such insinuation. As the mother of an autistic child I would have hoped you could appreciate that some children's social skills are not their own fault. Would you call a child with autism who hits out through frustration and panic a little shit too?
You're worried about your son and rightly so but please remember that these kids are vulnerable and need understanding not demonised. I'm not saying it's your job to help them but consider that their behaviour is no more their own fault than it is your son's fault that he is socially awkward.

I'd feel empathy for a child and wouldn't blame them at all, I'd still be annoyed my child was being assaulted and would be asking the school what steps they'd be taking to keep my child safe. No child should be subject to violence at school regardless of the reason.

Volunteer in a school for a day, particularly primary and you will soon see the issue. Kicking off isn't lack of discipline. I'm talking about major disruptions which affect the rest of the class learning.

Rude and cheeky comments or low level disruptions might be kids showing off, often because they are trying to avoid work. It's all just attention seeking. Smaller class sizes and more targeted support would help a great deal.

So are all the children, 'kicking off' in class in need of 'support'?

No. Anyone who has been to school, spent any time with children or been a teacher knows full well that this isn't true. Certainly anyone who has been a teacher knows it. I don't really understand why anyone would claim otherwise.

Obviously only anecdotal, but my husband is a good example. He admits to having been an utter pain in the arse at school, to the point of having been kicked out of lessons permanently for one subject. No SEN, lovely supportive but not indulgent parents, no home problems at all. Well-liked and popular at school. Grew up a bit in time to do well at A Level, became a teacher!

Absolutely. That's completely understandable. Nobody is condoning the violence. What I'm saying is consider the reason why it's happening before judging that child as a bad boy. All children have the right to be safe in school and at home.

Out of interest, how did his parents respond when he was kicked out of class?
Interesting that he chose to become a teacher. How does he now deal with disruptive children?

This is very true and not being talked about enough on this thread.
There are underlying issues surrounding many families these days that are contributing to this problem in schools. It’s too black and white to just blame ‘shitty parenting’ when those parents are on their knees surviving day to day and in need of help themselves.
Combine this with what another poster says about kids today ‘smelling bullshit’ around what is being forced upon them in the name of education as well as access to social media, chronic underfunding in schools and services outside of school cut back to nothing and it’s a perfect storm.