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!

I am trying to imagine. That’s all.

Goodness. I have sympathised with teachers all along on this thread. MN is a weird place.

I thought the problem was the boys being brought in male-free households or households where there is a string of feckless stepfathers passing through?

Teachers aren’t legally allowed to put hands on a child and physically move or restrain them without a tonne of paperwork being involved and really unless their life is in immediate danger - child runs onto a train track as an extreme example, child about to poor scalding water on themselves. You need to be taught de escalation techniques in order to safely remove the child and/or have them calm down. The safest thing for everyone is to remove the other children so they don’t get hurt. Even the teacher can remove themselves and observe the behaviour from a distance unless they are doing something unsafe - climbing out of a window for example, as long as the classroom is safe. Even in send settings there will be a plan in place for what happens when certain behaviours are displayed. If a child is throwing furniture it’s best no one stands in front of them. It’s almost impossible to calm someone down when their behaviour has got that bad and extreme. If the only way to stop that child’s behaviour at the age of 7 is to pick them up and take them somewhere else, then try that when they turn 11 or 15 and still showing that behaviour.

School staff can be trained to restrain children in a safe way but that should only be a last resort and there are different techniques for different situations. They can be taught to safely move a child in crisis behaviour from one space to another but it might need the addition of extra adults.

If a child in a mainstream classroom is regularly displaying behaviour that is unsafe for them and their classmates and teacher such as throwing furniture about them something is needs to be put in place where the behaviour triggers can be known and spotted earlier and techniques put in place to stop the behaviour escalating from low level disruption to full blown furniture throwing. And it can take months of observing the child to work out what triggers the behaviours and what can be done to the environment or lessons to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Britain =/= England. We are not English.

Please, please write to your MP about this. Do you honestly want to wait another two years of your child’s education before something happens? (And how long will that take to kick in?)

Goodness. I have sympathised with teachers all along on this thread. MN is a weird place.

I don't care if you "sympathised with teachers". You made some vile and absurd comments, including trying to blame single mothers for failing schools. 🙄 Hence it is a relief you aren't a teacher because that really would be setting the bar for recruitment extremely low. And now you have feigned surprise because you've been called out on the misogynistic nonsense you decided to post. Tiresome.

My son went through the same thing in primary and secondary, no one acted when I complained about it in primary I ended up paying a tutor to help him , I complained in secondary and they moved him to a quieter class but I did say I wouldn’t be sending him to school unless the situation is resolved as the stress was making him ill which was the truth

Yes. Some kids have never known consequences.
Coupled with many schools filled with the frogspawn of the absolute dregs of the world, it's bleak.

There‘s something magic going on here. Based on this thread 99.5% of children are trying soooo hard to learn and those naughty other children are ruining it for them. Sometimes this totally is the case. I have one class where I am nagging the whole class because the overall standard of behaviour is poor and I feel bad for the ‚goodies‘ that have to listen to the moaning. In my other classes students who want to learn and have the skills to do so, are learning perfectly well. Students who are less motivated/disciplined learn less and get less out if the lesson. In this whole thread we have about 2 parents who admit their children aren’t angels. As a teacher I can tell you, that if one or two students are badly behaved you don‘t have much of a problem. However if you have a class of children who like to mess about a bit and then blame everything on the poor behaviour of the others, then THAT is a problem. I think some of your children might not be quite as great as you think. Your children also went through covid. Your children also have modern parents with modern ideas about rights and individuality. Your children also have screen time and technology that no other generation has had before. So consider that your children may be part of the problem and that blaming everyone around them and complaining about how terrible everything is for them might be part of the problem too.

This is the case for most state ones

That said, it's a religious school and many hoops have to be jumped in order to get in. Which inadvertently translates to there being very few - if any - parents who aren't engaged in their child's education.

Yes, it's effectively selection by the back door. I used to work in a school like that.

Most of these posts are blaming one group of people 🤦‍♀️Completely missing the point. It’s not anyones fault.. Ego & pride want to blame things or people etc… It’s not the Teachers or the kids or the parents or covid or government the school system is failing everyone involved in it! A lot of mental health issues for kids which is sad!
i know I don’t have the solution personally obviously but I know it’s failing. We need to think of solutions not blame each other for problems!

I work as a SEN teaching assistant at a high school and kids these days are feral and unruly so hard when the children know there is only so much you can do give out warning/detention etc

100% behaviour is worse than ever.
I’ve been at my current school for 5 years.
we give behaviour points for bad and good behaviour. The first year I was there a year 8 boy had 80 negative behaviour points, this was seen as shocking, he was likely to be permanently excluded etc. There was only one other boy with over 70. Both actually ended up staying until the end of year 11.

this year I have a bottom set year 9 class. There are 10 children (ie one third of the class) with over 100 negative points.

there are also about 20 children in the school with over 200.

The school isn’t allowed to exclude all of them so other kids continue to suffer. Almost none of these children have SEN.

We pay people to go to work. There's the threat of losing their job and the pay if they dick around and don't work.

Kids on the other hand, have to be at school. We don't pay them. The 'reward' is intangible and far in the future. An enormous amount of effort in schools is based around merely getting the kids to do the work. All the routines, expectations, culture, sanctions, rewards centred on getting the kids into a classroom, sat at a desk and actually engaging with the material are phenomenal.

Getting the kids to do the work feels like it's getting harder. My experience with Y11 and also reported from colleagues and across twitter was that this cohort of Y11s were incredibly apathetic.

What do we do about that?

DH is a teacher (lucky him, no way I could do his job) and he always quotes two things when this discussion comes up:
1 - kids know all the rules etc inside out so they know precisely what a teacher can and can’t do and it puts them in a very difficult position. The propensity to film it or have multiple witnesses backing the trouble makers up (incorrectly) makes it doubly tough.
2 - so many parents are a nightmare and refuse to accept in year 7/8 that their precious little shitbag of a kid could possibly do these things…then, come parents evening in year 10 the same parents say “I just can’t do anything with him/her, they don’t listen, they’ve go no respect” etc. I think one year he wrote a list of kids he thought he’d have this conversation about and then checked it a few years later 😂

I stopped teaching 16 yrs ago.
I was in a job where I visited 10 senior school a week as a Behaviour Support “ Expert “.
Behaviour in some of those school ( large city ) was awful then.
I’m a strong personality, but I would no more be a teacher now for all the tea in China .

Ok you have lost the plot.

Please quote where I have said one thing about single mothers anywhere!

And also give me an example of my misogyny.

Come back to me and I will await your apology.

Wow..is that at a fee paying school? Surely the boys can be asked to leave fairly easily?

@Distract I quoted and responded to your offensive and ridiculous comments earlier. If you're suffering some kind of amnesia just go back and read the thread. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I taught in a deprived area for 22 years. Don’t anymore and The answer is yes !!!!!

@Winnipeg23

If the school is relying on all the fees being paid (a lot of smaller independents do), they won't expel children unless they are absolutely forced to. Believe me I know.

From this thread it seems the issues in secondary are a lot to do with dc that are bored and don't want to learn. Those dc would have left school at 14 years ago. Now they're forced in a classroom that they don't want to be in to take exams they don't want to take. Teachers are forced to teach kids things they don't want to know for exam results and ofsted.

I'm not sure what the answer is but forcing dc into an environment they don't want to be in is not working.

Can only speak for schools here and yes it is.

Children have to be 'heard' they need to express their 'voice'. The behaviour is often poor and phones in classroom, goading behaviour, no sanctions for how they behave and some are awful. Bullies, spitefulness, it's a battleground. Unfortunately, parents often assume their children are angels.