To thing school need to radically rethink their offer

[BlooDeBloop]

In lockdown everyone understood that schooling was optional. Everyone understood that missing a day or week didn't matter in the grand scheme of things

During lockdown students learned that rules could be arbitrary and not make sense

Lockdown taught parents that school was critical as childcare to enable them to work

Since then, kids are back in school. They are challenging the rules on an unprecedented scale. Parents are laughing at the SLT. Kids are cheering when they clowns are removed from class. The kids know there is no real punishment, no real consequence for deliberately, chronically disruptive behaviour.

Teachers are breaking down and leaving in droves, more than ever before. Leaving young, inexperienced colleagues in the trenches.

After having to educate their own children parents understand that Shakespeare, French, geography and more have no modern relevance in the UK. The curricula are unimaginative and disconnected from the future world of work. There is no longer home support for the suck it up attitude with which kids were once sent to school.

Once upon a time there was an understanding that the kids would go to school, get an education, leave to pursue training or higher education. Today, that understanding has broken down. Under the scrutiny and transparency that SM provides, we collectively understand this is not true. Schools are failing, not through lack of care or competency but a lack of relevance. Further, the social mores that governed acceptable behaviour have softened to such a degree a good 10% of every state secondary class will seek to destroy the locus of power in the room (teacher, SLT, whoever). To compound the issue, students are all seeing for themselves on SM how to disrupt and then go about emulating their heros.

This is a cluster fuck of gigantic proportions.

AIBU in thinking that there needs to be a big scale conversation (revolution!) around what schools offer in this new world? For starters, moving with the times to offer skills that are actually needed and valued in the workforce and in further ed (e.g. IT at all levels, from typing to programming, and not shoved into one hour a week). Real alternative curricula for non academic kids (let's not pretend these kids need Chaucer in their lives).

And when students are persistently disruptive over a long period of time, borderline encouraged by their parents, they should be sent home. Permanently. To be educated (or not) by their parents. That would sort out 90% of poor behaviour overnight.

Ahhhh. That feels better 😁. Thank you for reading if you got this far.

I think you have it the wrong way round - the reason they are incapable is not because they are too stupid to achieve any GCSEs. They can't do it because they have never put in any effort, probably due to lack of parental support from primary age, and therefore are lacking in basic skills.

Grade 5 GCSE is a very basic level - it should be achievable for most. It really doesn't need dumbing down further.

My experience of having attended a mediocre comprehensive is that it isn't the least academically capable students who misbehave. People I was at school with who are now still barely literate and genuinely were incapable of French etc, and are now in the most menial of jobs, were not the trouble makers.

And it wasn't the most inspiring of teachers who had the best behaviour either. It was the strongest disciplinarians, the ones who started with seating plans, silence etc.

If pupils won't sit and listen they can't expect to hear anything interesting. It comes down to respecting your teachers. This idea that it's fine to mess around if you don't understand is rubbish. If you don't understand you need to ask for help, go and find out more yourself, ask your friends, parents etc. Not give up and start throwing things or locking teachers in a cupboard. Most 5 year olds can learn this. You don't give teenagers enough credit to think they have so little self control

Unless you are a qualified teacher who has tried to teach bottom set year 10 on a Friday afternoon- please do shut up about teachers how easy teaching is. You really have not got a #*><¥$# clue. Many thanks 😏

You do need to know basic maths before you can learn data analysis though...you don't need to remember it but you need the principles
Pretty sure there's not much rote learning involved any more either...
Yes a machine can do everything for you but that's false...someone has set that machine up to do that. That person knows the basics, put that information online etc. We can't just all rely on someone else doing the expert work and just tapping into it. That is being a consumer, not someone who generates something useful.

I agree with your description of the current state of affairs.
I partially agree with your reasoning as to how it's got this way.
But I entirely disagree with your proposed solution. Teaching a range of topics - yes Shakespeare and Chaucer, but also drama, music, art, as well as maths, science, business etc - gives kids a chance to experience subjects they would never otherwise be able to. They can see what suits them, and perhaps move forward in life in that area. Or at least they will have that broad grounding in their psyche, which is a good thing. Plenty of time to do job-based training afterwards.

All of this.

You need to be able to spot patterns. You need to know how to use information sources and how to assess whether source is relevant. You need to be able to problem solve.

Do you remember learning about Venn diagrams? When I query a database and "join" two tables, I use set theory. When I use boolean operators in my programming, I'm applying the reasoning behind those truth tables you learned about in Maths. And I use arrays all the time.

We should be teaching excel formulae and data analysis methods in Maths lessons.
Simple Excel formulae like adding the total of a column was a year 7 computing lesson for my kids.

Yes, of course, but the kids who are being failed by the current system aren't going to be the inventors/researchers creating "new" stuff are they? They're the ones being failed as the current system doesn't cater for them, so they are left behind and cause disruption for the others who want to learn. You can't teach Shakespeare or Chaucer to someone who isn't literate. We're trying, and failing, to provide an academic based education to everyone, which is ridiculous as the "non academics" need education too. And regardless of peoples views on education for work, there are too many people leaving school incapable of working at a time of massive labour shortages! Schools need to be providing a mix of work-based skills and academic skills, so that they offer what all pupils need, not just the academically capable.

3 years ago when he left! Yes school proudly showed off 3d printer, CAD/CAM computer, laser cutter and even a lego robot solving a rubik cube at their open day 7 years earlier. Trouble is, it was all locked away and none of it was used except for their "tech club" after school club and A level classes. Our son never got near it as they didn't use it for lessons, not even GCSE! So what use was it to most pupils?

Obviously for more complex stuff, but I was meaning pretty basic things like simple formulae, such as at sum, which so many people can't do because they were never taught anything about spreadsheets. Yes, you can find out for yourself by Googling, but you can say that for everything really. I despair when clients, even young ones in their early 20's send me a nonsensical spreadsheet full of errors which should be simple, but they've not been taught it so have cobbled together something where columns don't even up!

My son was never taught any computing at all. He seemed to fall between the cracks as the curriculum changed. Yes, they had computers in some classrooms which they used for research etc and writing essays sometimes, but no one ever gave any proper lessons on using them. I think that lessons in basic operation and desktop apps should be compulsory as computing is now a fundamental part of life for everyone, let we just allow children to teach themselves. I'm not talking high level coding or data analytics, but the basics.

Perhaps if teachers didn’t have to read misinformed abuse on platforms such as this on the daily they would want to stay in the job. It’s exhausting continually being told how ‘lazy’ you are, when the job is ridiculous

And when students are persistently disruptive over a long period of time, borderline encouraged by their parents, they should be sent home. Permanently. To be educated (or not) by their parents. That would sort out 90% of poor behaviour overnight.

Ah yes sending them home to poverty, parents who are struggling or who find it really hard, multi occupancy/ overcrowded homes, hotel rooms (as there is no home), abuse, domestic abuse, violence. Homes where there are no computers, school equipment or IT or heating!! Homes where in lock down these children were hidden, they couldn’t be safeguarded and were bloody hard to find and support!!!!

Shit school

my children very much gets hands on involvement with the tech

I love fact that technology didn’t help the OP avoid a typo in her thread title

Yep, both my DC have learnt basic (and more than basic) Excel commands /analysis in Y7.

I agree only on one point you made, those that constantly disrupt the class need harder punishment, we are too soft on disruptive older children.
I do not believe they should be sent home on a permanent basis though there needs to be another way.
I dont know what that is im not a teacher, maybe they should come up with a way round this, but teachers should not have to put up with being threatened /bullied.
Maybe we should start looking at how other country's solve this, although i do believe it starts at home.

In my primary school we had a very kind donation of a 3d printer. It's fantastic. But we haven't used it yet.
We literally don't have the time- the DT curriculum already gets squeezed as it's not a core subject. We have to teach to the curriculum- thinking failed Ofsted inspection if we don't- and the DT curriculum doesn't have a section on 3d printing. Not according to our DT lead anyway. It's such a shame, wasting away in a cupboard. Also, one printer for 33 kids, bit of a challenge.

My Sil works with these disruptive kids from a very early age. Their backgrounds are horrific - they arrive at school not able to learn, not able to socialise, no trust of adults and without investment at that very early age things get worse for these kids - and they will most likely end up in prison. Early intervention is needed to help these kids develop trust, learn how to learn, and develop emotional control - the current model of punishing them into behaving just makes things worse in the long run, but finding funding for a specialist unit is bloody hard.

Other countries aren't solving it either, although I'm sure some are doing better than others. Here's Switzerland, same story:

'one in five pupils was classified by staff as having behavioural problems...stories of teachers having to deal with pupils who are disruptive in class, throw furniture about or who are violent.'

What can be done about disruptive kids? - SWI swissinfo.ch

And yet in Finland who seem to lead the way on all things educational there is no punishment.

"The main principle of Finish education is respectful attitude and no punishments. There are no punishments even for the laziest students. If there is one, individual tendencies for various professions are to be discovered. Identification of such tendencies for every pupil is the main mission of the school."

@RebelHarry Are you saying that Finland has solved the problems OP is talking about? Did it have such problems in the past?

Well I haven’t done on audit comparing the op’s post with the Finnish system if that’s what you are asking?😳 But in general they have less problems and attain higher standards. They invest more money and that is consistently mentioned as one of the major problems with our approach. We run a bargain basement educational system - no wonder the seams are busting open.

Totally with you on shitty kids being removed. So over the mentality that kids are the government’s problem… um no you chose to have kids, take responsibility! And agree about Shakespeare!

This article from 2017 says:

'By analyzing a representative sample of comprehensive school teachers (N = 2,276) in Finland at grade levels 1-9, it was found that 30% of Finnish school teachers regularly use this punishment.'

SCHOOL DETENTION IN FINLAND: A PILOT STUDY | Saloviita | European Journal of Education Studies (oapub.org)

What do you think the percentage is in the UK?

@Pollyputhekettleon interesting article - they don't seem convinced that detention is an effective way to deal with behavioural problems. And the trend is moving away from heavy punishments.
My kids were well-behaved and worked hard - they received a couple of detentions over their entire time at school each one I believed was unnecessary at the time - they turned up (the teacher and some of the pupils did not) did them and they lost a bit of respect for that teacher - I hope it didn't teach them to put up with bad behaviour/bullying from their boss in the workplace - that was my main worry.